WEBVTT

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JACK: I have this theory that if you ever go to Western Union or use a Western Union,

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you probably have an interesting story as to why.

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Here’s my Western Union story.

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This one time I had a job and while working there, I got to be friends with a co-worker.

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His name was Billy Ray.

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Billy Ray was a wild, crazy older guy who had so many stories that I didn’t even know

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if they were true or made up or what.

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I would sometimes hang out with Billy Ray after work.

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He had an unusual way of looking at the world; he was pretty suspicious and didn’t trust

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anyone.

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He had a lot of street smarts too, and he always made sure to keep an eye on me to help

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me stay out of trouble, too.

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[MUSIC] One day after work which was pay day, Billy Ray asked if I could drive him home.

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I said sure.

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We hop in my car.

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He says hey, on the way home, can we stop by Western Union?

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I said Billy Ray, there’s nothing good for you at Western Union.

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Trust me, you don’t want to go there.

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He said no, no, no, I have to send money back home to my ma in Milwaukee.

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I said fine, so we drive to Western Union.

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I park on the street right in front.

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I tell him listen, I’m gonna wait here in the car until you get out.

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He gets out and goes in.

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Now, my car was a little weird.

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The back license plate was my legal, normal license plate but the state I lived in didn’t

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require a front license plate.

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So, I’m like well, you know what?

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I’m gonna put a novelty plate on the front if it’s not required, so I put on this license

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plate that said AREA 51 and it looked like it was from the state of Nevada.

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Well, while I was parked there, a cop drove by, saw my AREA 51 plate and laughed.

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Then as he went by, he looked back and saw a different plate on the back.

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Well, the cop didn’t like this and swung back around and parked right behind me on

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the street in front of Western Union.

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He gets out, comes to my car, asks about my two different license plate.

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I said oh yeah, one’s just a fake plate ‘cause I don’t need that one on the front.

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He said look, that’s just wrong.

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Don’t put a fake license plate on your car.

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I told him okay, as soon as I get home, I’ll take it off.

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So, he takes my license and registration back to his police car to check if I was wanted

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for anything.

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Well, at this point, Billy Ray comes out of Western Union and comes into my car and says

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alright, let’s go.

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I said well, I gotta wait a minute.

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He asks why.

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I said well, there’s a cop behind us.

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He’s like, did you do something wrong?

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He looks back and sees the cop coming to the car.

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Billy Ray starts flipping out.

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He starts shouting nonsense like I knew you were a criminal; I knew from the first minute

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when I saw you.

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What are you, an axe murderer?

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What did you do?

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I said Billy Ray, why did you get in the car when there was a cop behind me?

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Didn’t you look first?

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He was upset.

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He got all fidgety and didn’t know what to do.

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He asked me should I run?

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How bad is this?

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I said calm down; I’ll sort this out.

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I can hear him start to hyperventilate.

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The cop comes up to the window, hands me my license and registration and says have a good

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day.

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I started to drive off.

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I explained to Billy that I had a novelty plate that the cop didn’t like.

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From then on, Billy Ray never asked me for a ride home again.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider.

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This is Darknet Diaries.

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[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: [MUSIC] Real quick warning before we get started; this episode has some strong

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language and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

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If you’re sensitive to explicit language, you may want to skip this one.

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So, it’s fairly common that when I post an episode, there seems to always be someone

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who messages me afterwards saying hey, I’m familiar with that story.

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They say something like oh, I used to work there or I knew that guy.

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It’s wild but I love hearing any extra bits of detail that I might have missed.

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That’s how I met this guy, our guest [00:05:00] today.

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After publishing Episode 32 titled The Carder, I got a message from a guy named Cameron.

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Cam told me I actually got some of the details wrong in that story.

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I said how do you know?

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He said because he was part of that operation.

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This led us to some phone calls to discuss more.

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CAM: It’s kind of a weird situation, you know, where I’m at and everything.

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JACK: The more I talked with Cam, the more I learned how crazy his story was.

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CAM: But I’m kinda weird about it anyway just talking in general with a bunch of people

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around and then on top of that, like I was saying with the cameras and everything, it

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just kinda sketches me out a little bit.

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It really feels uncomfortable, but…

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JACK: But you’re in the yard of a halfway house; is that what it is?

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CAM: Yeah, I’m actually at a halfway house.

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I did about – a little over – right at about eight years in prison.

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JACK: Oh, well, I guess you know the ending now; eight years in prison, currently in a

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halfway house which is where we talked over the phone.

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CAM: Now, we have this train about to terrorize us.

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JACK: I hear it.

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CAM: You heard it?

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JACK: [TRAIN BELLS] Yeah.

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It’s coming closer.

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CAM: Yeah, you hear it, huh?

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JACK: You hear that thing all night long?

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CAM: Yes. JACK: Gah.

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CAM: They choose the worst fucking property that they can buy, I guess.

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It’s like a cheap – [TRAIN HORN].

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It’s always – all the jails and it seems like almost every jail [TRAIN HORN], every

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fine establishment like this place is [TRAIN HORN] usually next to a train track.

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JACK: I just wanted to mention this train part because if you’re driving and you hear

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a train go by, it might be from this podcast.

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So, after having chats with him and going back and forth with phone calls, I looked

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through his indictment and tried to piece together exactly what he did and who he was.

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I’ll be honest; Cam wasn’t who I was expecting.

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Yeah, it’s interesting hearing from you ‘cause I wasn’t sure if you were gonna

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have a Russian accent or where you’re from, so…

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CAM: I grew up in Augusta, Georgia.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Let’s start at the beginning, or at least back to high school.

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His first experience with this side of the internet came when Cam was a teenager.

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Cam was selling stuff on eBay to make a little money and his eBay account got hacked.

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Someone sent him a phishing e-mail and he fell for it.

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He entered his password on the hacker’s website and not on eBay’s.

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The hackers then used his password and logged into his eBay account and quickly changed

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his password and e-mail so he couldn’t get in.

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He saw that someone listed some fake laptops for sale on his account.

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CAM: Yeah, I couldn’t actually understand at the time for the life of me why anyone

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would do that.

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JACK: In high school, Cam was into computers and would download some pirated movies, too.

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One day he realized he could put his computer skills to use at school.

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Cam was falling behind at school and wanted to change his grades.

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He couldn’t actually figure out how to hack into his grades but he did hack into the school’s

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website and messed around a lot.

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He made a mistake by telling some people about this prank, and that got him suspended.

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CAM: I learned a quick lesson; to watch who you talk to.

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JACK: That wasn’t the last time Cam hacked his school, though.

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Cam took a CAD class in high school and he spent the whole class messing around with

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his friend.

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Since he wasn’t doing his assignments, he came up with an idea; steal someone else’s

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work.

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He used Sub7 which is a Trojan to attack the guy’s computer in front of him.

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He got the guy’s IP, logged in, took all his work, and then just changed his name on

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the work and printed it out and turned it in and got an A for the class.

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Cam made fake report cards, too.

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He would use Photoshop, design it up, write whatever grades he wanted, and make it look

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official and then sell it to other students.

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These Photoshop skills would prove to be pretty useful later on because Cam was about to enter

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the world of fake IDs.

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Do you, the listener, remember when you were seventeen or twenty, just one year away from

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being able to buy cigarettes or alcohol or do some adult-age thing?

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That wait is very hard for some people, including Cam.

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He went online and found a place to buy a fake ID.

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He ordered one.

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To make a fake ID look right, you have to send your real photo in.

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So, he sent a photo of himself and got it in the mail.

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It was kinda crappy looking; the cuts around the corners were off and it just didn’t

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look right.

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But he thought ah, what the heck, I’ll try it.

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He gave it a shot.

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One day he went to the store to try to use his fake ID to buy a pack of cigarettes but

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the store didn’t buy it and confiscated his fake ID.

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The plan failed but by this point, Cam had really analyzed what an ID should look like

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and researched how all this was done and decided he could probably make a better fake ID himself.

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This was the decision that sent him on a new trajectory in life.

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CAM: [MUSIC] I told myself that I’m not gonna buy another piece of crap ID.

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I’m just gonna make one.

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JACK: If you’re wondering how a high school kid could just decide to make a decent fake

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ID, you should know that Cam wasn’t just an ordinary high school kid.

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He was deep into computers and he started hanging around [00:10:00] some pretty shady

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forums and chat rooms.

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He became a regular on Counterfeit Library, and that’s a place that could teach people

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how to make fake diplomas and IDs.

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CAM: Counterfeit Library was like a precursor to ShadowCrew or CarderPlanet or any of those

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forums around then.

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JACK: Whoa, the guys from ShadowCrew; I’ll have to do a whole episode on ShadowCrew one

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day because that’s a crazy story all by itself.

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But basically ShadowCrew was a website, a chat room, a forum, and on the forum you could

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trade illegal things.

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Picture a typical darknet marketplace but before the darknet existed and before Bitcoin

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existed.

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On ShadowCrew, you could buy fake degrees and fake diplomas and stolen credit card numbers

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and fake IDs.

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Cam wasn’t on that website yet ‘cause that website didn’t exist but he was in

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the chat rooms with the people who would later go on to make ShadowCrew.

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Cam started learning how to make fake IDs through this chat room and he downloaded templates

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and learned about materials.

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He eventually figured out a process that worked and made his own fake ID.

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So, eventually he was producing some pretty convincing cards for himself.

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His picture was on it but with a fake name and a fake address.

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It looked pretty good, better than the one he ordered, at least.

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Cam was living with his dad at the time.

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As a teenager, Cam wanted cool stuff to show off at school or something.

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CAM: Clothes, shoes.

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When I became old enough to drive, a car.

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JACK: He realized to buy this stuff, he would need to find a way to make money.

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So, Cam came up with an idea; he could sell fake IDs to kids at school.

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He got a fellow student to be his frontman and his friends would make deals and Cam would

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make the cards.

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CAM: You’d chill a cartridge up with an adhesive, like a glue sort of adhesive, and

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you could print with the templates onto the laminates the design for the hologram.

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It would print basically the glue for the design of the hologram and then you’d have

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the right mixture of these powders for different – whatever state would be a different mixture

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of gold and silver, whatever, and then you’d sprinkle it on it.

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It would stay to the adhesive and now that was your holo-pouch.

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Now, those laminates would have a magstripe on them too for California or for Texas, you

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know, for the states that it applied to or whatever.

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JACK: His local business was going well but Cam wanted to sell more cards and make more

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money, so he took his business online and started selling the fake IDs on internet forums.

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Something strange started happening.

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[MUSIC] People were buying lots of fake IDs.

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Like, one guy would buy dozens of fake IDs with the same picture, just lots of different

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names and addresses.

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This would be like, $1,000 worth of fake IDs.

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Cam couldn’t figure out why but he just kinda shrugged and made them and shipped them

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and let the mystery go.

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But then one day he got a clue; one day a guy ordering a bunch of fake IDs from him

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made an intriguing offer.

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CAM: He said I can either pay you $1,000 or I could send you $2,000 carded Western Union.

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Which one do you prefer?

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Of course, I’ve been hearing and reading about people carding Western Union and things

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like that, but I didn’t realize – it was the first interaction with somebody that was

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actually doing it, I guess.

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JACK: Cam put the pieces together.

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This guy was carding.

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Carding is when you use stolen credit card details to buy something either digitally

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or by counterfeiting a physical version of the card.

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You can use these for anything; shopping online, cashing out at ATMs, or sending money to someone

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through Western Union.

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What this guy was offering is he would send Cam $2,000 through Western Union but it would

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be from a stolen credit card.

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This is more risky for Cam because it’s illegal to receive money that you know is

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stolen, so he had to make the choice; $1,000 in clean money or $2,000 in stolen money?

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CAM: I was just really curious and kind of I guess fascinated by all the stuff that people

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were talking about on there.

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But at the time it was really – I didn’t really believe for sure that a lot of people

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were really doing all this stuff.

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You know what I mean?

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It kinda just seemed like okay, for real; are they actually doing this?

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Then it was a whole different ball game back then.

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Things were pretty much wide open.

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JACK: Cam had known about carding before, or at least he’d heard of it.

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But one day, he found physical evidence of it.

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He was at an ATM and near the ATM was a plastic credit card on the ground.

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He picked it up and noticed something strange; the text on it was black and blurry and the

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embossed numbers just didn’t look right.

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Cam thought for sure this was a counterfeit credit card.

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CAM: I was just kinda like, wow.

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It kinda made me think okay, so I guess some of this stuff really is going on, you know,

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if I just found one of these on there.

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So, out of curiosity, I just kept it and held onto it.

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JACK: Cam dabbled with trying to make fake credit cards himself.

00:13:25.350 --> 00:13:30.199
While making these fake IDs, he got ahold of an MSR which is a magstripe encoder, or

00:13:30.199 --> 00:13:33.760
you can think of it as the device that writes information to a credit card.

00:13:33.760 --> 00:13:37.520
CAM: The reason I needed one at the time was for coding IDs.

00:13:37.520 --> 00:13:40.500
That was the only –my only interest at that time.

00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:42.899
I wanted my IDs to scan.

00:13:42.899 --> 00:13:47.041
It was Texas and California were two states I was making, and I needed them scanned, so

00:13:47.041 --> 00:13:52.579
I wanted an MSR. [00:15:00] But at the time, they costed like $600 or $700 so I brought

00:13:52.579 --> 00:13:57.630
it up in the channel and somebody mentioned man, just card it.

00:13:57.630 --> 00:14:01.810
That kinda sparked my interest where I messaged him like, what do you mean, card it?

00:14:01.810 --> 00:14:04.440
JACK: This really sparked Cam’s interest.

00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:07.790
He wasn’t sure what they meant by just card it.

00:14:07.790 --> 00:14:11.280
But he looked into it and was able to get his hands on a full.

00:14:11.280 --> 00:14:17.130
CAM: It’s basically a CVV, a card with a CVV; the expiration but also the name, address,

00:14:17.130 --> 00:14:20.009
phone number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, social security number.

00:14:20.009 --> 00:14:21.709
It’s a full info, a full.

00:14:21.709 --> 00:14:24.029
JACK: Not just Track 2; gotcha.

00:14:24.029 --> 00:14:25.029
CAM: Yeah.

00:14:25.029 --> 00:14:29.152
So, it’s actually what – the dumps, you have the tracks of data.

00:14:29.152 --> 00:14:33.399
This is just for online purchases or over the phone or whatever.

00:14:33.399 --> 00:14:37.960
It’s the account information but also included is the mother’s maiden name, social security

00:14:37.960 --> 00:14:39.040
number, date of birth.

00:14:39.040 --> 00:14:41.470
So they call it a full, a full info.

00:14:41.470 --> 00:14:45.440
JACK: He was naive at the time and thought by just having a full it would allow him to

00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:46.440
buy whatever he wanted.

00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:48.829
So, he gave it a shot; tried to buy something.

00:14:48.829 --> 00:14:50.829
But the transactions never went through.

00:14:50.829 --> 00:14:55.850
He tried a few times but this full didn’t work at all for some reason, so Cam wasn’t

00:14:55.850 --> 00:15:00.329
sure if carding was real or not until this guy offered to send him some cash through

00:15:00.329 --> 00:15:03.199
Western Union using a stolen credit card.

00:15:03.199 --> 00:15:07.000
CAM: Now, looking back, the risk probably was – should have been a little more concerning

00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:12.740
but I was just excited to do it, so of course I took the $2,000 of the carded Western Union.

00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:17.029
JACK: [MUSIC] That meant Cam had to pick up the money in person.

00:15:17.029 --> 00:15:20.730
Now, Western Union is a way to transfer money from one person to another.

00:15:20.730 --> 00:15:24.380
You can call them on the phone, give your credit card details to them, and tell them

00:15:24.380 --> 00:15:25.829
who’s going to pick up the money.

00:15:25.829 --> 00:15:29.220
They’ll take the money out of the credit card and when the person comes in and presents

00:15:29.220 --> 00:15:32.399
proper ID, then Western Union will give them the money.

00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:36.420
There are official Western Union shops out there but this is such a popular service that

00:15:36.420 --> 00:15:40.620
it’s often seen in grocery stores and gas stations in the US and around the world.

00:15:40.620 --> 00:15:45.209
So, he makes a fake ID, puts a picture of himself in it but uses a fake name and address

00:15:45.209 --> 00:15:49.649
and everything, and then tells the guy to send money to this fake name he just invented.

00:15:49.649 --> 00:15:54.100
So, the guy calls up Western Union, gives them the stolen credit card numbers, and sends

00:15:54.100 --> 00:15:57.500
$2,000 to this fake name that Cam gave.

00:15:57.500 --> 00:16:02.009
Western Union took the money out of the credit cards and held it for Cam to come get.

00:16:02.009 --> 00:16:05.860
Cam gets word the money is there but he didn’t have a car, so his friend’s girlfriend drove

00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:07.380
him to Western Union.

00:16:07.380 --> 00:16:11.440
He goes in, fills out the form, gives that ID to the lady at the counter, and the lady

00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:14.339
picks up the ID and looks at it and looks at Cam.

00:16:14.339 --> 00:16:16.380
Cam starts to get nervous.

00:16:16.380 --> 00:16:19.230
He’s committing fraud and he knows it.

00:16:19.230 --> 00:16:21.779
Any mistake could get him caught and in trouble.

00:16:21.779 --> 00:16:26.589
Since he made the ID himself, he knew just how many mistakes it had.

00:16:26.589 --> 00:16:31.640
But she doesn’t notice any problems; she counts out the money, hands him the cash,

00:16:31.640 --> 00:16:34.449
and he walks out of the store $2,000 richer.

00:16:34.449 --> 00:16:40.550
CAM: It was kind of I guess a rush or whatever you want to call it.

00:16:40.550 --> 00:16:42.110
It’s kind of a odd feeling.

00:16:42.110 --> 00:16:45.120
It’s kind of a thrill.

00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:49.410
JACK: The guy Cam was working with online was impressed at how well the transaction

00:16:49.410 --> 00:16:50.410
had gone.

00:16:50.410 --> 00:16:53.400
He wanted to keep buying fake IDs from Cam but he had another proposal.

00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:56.949
CAM: He’s like hey, I want to keep buying them from you but also, he’s like hey, a

00:16:56.949 --> 00:17:01.740
matter of fact, do you just want to start picking up transfers for me?

00:17:01.740 --> 00:17:03.350
‘Cause you’re the perfect drop guy.

00:17:03.350 --> 00:17:04.400
You make the IDs yourself.

00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:08.419
JACK: Cam was the perfect guy to do this; a rebellious teenager, good at computers,

00:17:08.419 --> 00:17:12.770
good at making counterfeit IDs, and who’s interested in the whole carding scene.

00:17:12.770 --> 00:17:17.419
He could quickly whip up a new ID whenever he needed to go drive and pick up some cash,

00:17:17.419 --> 00:17:21.530
and then his job was to act like someone else for five minutes, hand them the fake ID, and

00:17:21.530 --> 00:17:23.280
wait for them to give him cash.

00:17:23.280 --> 00:17:28.069
He agreed to this plan and all of a sudden something clicked in Cam’s head.

00:17:28.069 --> 00:17:31.919
Now he understood why people needed multiple IDs with the same picture.

00:17:31.919 --> 00:17:35.260
They weren’t sixteen-year-olds buying fake IDs to drink and smoke.

00:17:35.260 --> 00:17:37.940
They were using IDs to card.

00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:41.390
Cam was no longer peering into the dark world of carding.

00:17:41.390 --> 00:17:43.840
He realized he was already living it.

00:17:43.840 --> 00:17:46.740
CAM: [MUSIC] I took the offer.

00:17:46.740 --> 00:17:49.760
I said yeah, actually, no problem.

00:17:49.760 --> 00:17:52.410
JACK: So, they start working together.

00:17:52.410 --> 00:17:56.460
Cam would make a few fake IDs for himself and tell the guy what info was on the ID,

00:17:56.460 --> 00:18:00.760
and the guy would call Western Union, give them stolen credit card details and tell Cam

00:18:00.760 --> 00:18:01.760
it’s ready.

00:18:01.760 --> 00:18:05.520
Cam would then go down to any Western Union and pick up the cash.

00:18:05.520 --> 00:18:07.809
The plan was actually working pretty well.

00:18:07.809 --> 00:18:09.790
Cam started making some real money from this.

00:18:09.790 --> 00:18:14.270
Every day he worked with the guy, he made about $5,000 and that’s a lot for anyone,

00:18:14.270 --> 00:18:15.530
but especially a highschooler.

00:18:15.530 --> 00:18:18.660
CAM: I was making obviously more money than I’ve ever made in my life ‘cause I was

00:18:18.660 --> 00:18:22.140
only in high school at the time, making thousands of dollars a day.

00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:26.460
Now, I will say that he was a little older than me so he was more disciplined, and so

00:18:26.460 --> 00:18:31.030
he actually understood that it was something that probably wasn’t gonna last forever.

00:18:31.030 --> 00:18:33.260
JACK: Then Cam and the guy had a falling out.

00:18:33.260 --> 00:18:37.520
Their agreement just fizzled out somehow and all of a sudden Cam was back to where he started.

00:18:37.520 --> 00:18:40.450
But now he had a taste of the dark life.

00:18:40.450 --> 00:18:43.970
Cam liked the money that was coming in and he was still selling fake IDs.

00:18:43.970 --> 00:18:46.919
But those $5,000 days were gone.

00:18:46.919 --> 00:18:50.929
Cam didn’t like being cut off from this, [00:20:00] so he decided to take what he learned

00:18:50.929 --> 00:18:52.220
and go into business of his own.

00:18:52.220 --> 00:18:57.090
[MUSIC] The only problem was Cam didn’t have the skills to card yet.

00:18:57.090 --> 00:19:02.049
He understood the idea and the concepts of it but wasn’t sure about the means and methods

00:19:02.049 --> 00:19:03.650
to actually do it.

00:19:03.650 --> 00:19:08.250
He could make fake IDs and pick up the money, but his partner had always acquired the stolen

00:19:08.250 --> 00:19:11.140
cards and made the money transfers.

00:19:11.140 --> 00:19:13.510
He needed to get some stolen cards.

00:19:13.510 --> 00:19:16.400
He needed more credit card information.

00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:17.480
He needed help.

00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:21.480
So, he turned to the place that always helped him before, the forums and the chat rooms

00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:25.500
of Counterfeit Library which was now just about forming into ShadowCrew.

00:19:25.500 --> 00:19:30.280
He had the skills and ability to withdraw money from a stolen credit card but he didn’t

00:19:30.280 --> 00:19:31.730
have the stolen credit cards.

00:19:31.730 --> 00:19:35.809
He turned to the forum to figure that out, and there’s the option of buying them or

00:19:35.809 --> 00:19:37.040
becoming a casher.

00:19:37.040 --> 00:19:40.770
But the problem is, people in these forums were not always very trusting.

00:19:40.770 --> 00:19:43.390
They were hesitant to work with Cam.

00:19:43.390 --> 00:19:45.001
CAM: Actually, I kinda faked it.

00:19:45.001 --> 00:19:46.530
I faked it ‘til I made it, kinda.

00:19:46.530 --> 00:19:48.600
I just kinda said that I know how to do this.

00:19:48.600 --> 00:19:53.880
I had a general idea of what the guy was doing that I was working with but of course, I hadn’t

00:19:53.880 --> 00:19:54.880
done it.

00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:58.630
I didn’t have any experience, so I know just from reading guides and tutorials and

00:19:58.630 --> 00:20:02.260
stuff on ShadowCrew and whatnot that I know kinda what he’s doing, but I haven’t done

00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:03.260
it.

00:20:03.260 --> 00:20:07.520
I just kinda bullshit my way through it until started advertising in the channel that I

00:20:07.520 --> 00:20:08.520
know how to do it.

00:20:08.520 --> 00:20:12.390
JACK: Cam found a couple of guys from Kosovo, a country in Southeast Europe.

00:20:12.390 --> 00:20:14.470
These guys were looking for someone like him.

00:20:14.470 --> 00:20:17.060
They had acquired a lot of stolen credit cards.

00:20:17.060 --> 00:20:18.230
Who knows where they got them?

00:20:18.230 --> 00:20:23.049
But they were looking for anyone online who was willing to be a casher, someone to take

00:20:23.049 --> 00:20:26.650
these stolen credit cards and figure out a way to pull money out of them and then keep

00:20:26.650 --> 00:20:30.000
half of that and send the other half back to the guys in Kosovo.

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.320
CAM: Somebody hits me up like hey, look, we want to try you out.

00:20:34.320 --> 00:20:36.169
JACK: The Kosovo guys give him a test.

00:20:36.169 --> 00:20:39.700
They send him the full details of five stolen credit cards.

00:20:39.700 --> 00:20:43.840
The plan was that Cam would cash out on these cards and send half the money back to the

00:20:43.840 --> 00:20:45.380
guys in Kosovo.

00:20:45.380 --> 00:20:49.600
Cam did some research on the best way to try to charge these cards and gave it a shot.

00:20:49.600 --> 00:20:53.830
[TICKING, MUSIC] His plan was to call Western Union and give them the credit card details

00:20:53.830 --> 00:20:58.260
over the phone and try to send money to one of his fake identities.

00:20:58.260 --> 00:21:02.940
He tried to get cash from the first card but that card was declined.

00:21:02.940 --> 00:21:03.940
Shoot.

00:21:03.940 --> 00:21:07.559
He hung up the phone, waited a while, and called back and tried another card.

00:21:07.559 --> 00:21:10.080
But that card was declined, too.

00:21:10.080 --> 00:21:13.460
The third card was declined and the fourth card declined, too.

00:21:13.460 --> 00:21:15.180
Shoot, this wasn’t working.

00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:20.080
He was worried that if all five of the cards were no good, then it might make him look

00:21:20.080 --> 00:21:25.020
bad because what do you tell the Kosovo guys, that all the cards were bad?

00:21:25.020 --> 00:21:28.790
Would they even believe you or would they say no way, we gave you good cards, man; you

00:21:28.790 --> 00:21:30.850
must have just cashed them out and kept the money?

00:21:30.850 --> 00:21:35.090
They could ruin his reputation.

00:21:35.090 --> 00:21:38.210
Cam wanted to work with these guys but their cards were not working.

00:21:38.210 --> 00:21:41.070
He crossed his fingers and tried the fifth card.

00:21:41.070 --> 00:21:43.590
To his surprise, it went through.

00:21:43.590 --> 00:21:48.049
He was able to send $500 through Western Union to one of his fake names.

00:21:48.049 --> 00:21:54.420
CAM: I went, picked up the $500 myself and made a decision just to send all of it to

00:21:54.420 --> 00:21:59.740
them and say that that was actually for two orders, you know what I mean?

00:21:59.740 --> 00:22:03.730
I kinda bullshit my way a little bit, saying that two of them worked out, one failed, or

00:22:03.730 --> 00:22:05.409
whatever it was.

00:22:05.409 --> 00:22:10.809
I didn’t know that somebody actually being straight up and legit with them period was

00:22:10.809 --> 00:22:16.060
a huge valuable – having somebody in the United States obviously grabbed their attention

00:22:16.060 --> 00:22:19.740
because back then there was a huge problem, especially on these IRC networks, with ripping,

00:22:19.740 --> 00:22:23.950
just people just running – you know, they just say they’re gonna do this, they never

00:22:23.950 --> 00:22:27.630
do it, so obviously these people anticipated that they thought that was what was gonna

00:22:27.630 --> 00:22:28.630
happen.

00:22:28.630 --> 00:22:30.510
JACK: Finding good cashers is hard.

00:22:30.510 --> 00:22:32.679
Some cashers suck at what they’re doing.

00:22:32.679 --> 00:22:36.049
Others take the credit card numbers and cash out and just keep the money.

00:22:36.049 --> 00:22:38.630
It’s hard to build trust in these circles.

00:22:38.630 --> 00:22:42.390
People with huge amounts of stolen credit cards need a large network of cashers.

00:22:42.390 --> 00:22:46.150
They don’t want to send a ton of cards to the first person willing to do it.

00:22:46.150 --> 00:22:49.820
They need to find people who are smart at getting money out of the cards and are honest

00:22:49.820 --> 00:22:51.419
about sending back their cut of it.

00:22:51.419 --> 00:22:55.520
So, when the Kosovo guys saw money coming back from this first round, this made them

00:22:55.520 --> 00:22:58.590
happy and were willing to send Cam some more cards.

00:22:58.590 --> 00:23:03.159
So, Cam would continue to cash out on the new cards and send back half the money to

00:23:03.159 --> 00:23:04.539
the Kosovo guys.

00:23:04.539 --> 00:23:06.730
The Kosovo guys became really happy with Cam.

00:23:06.730 --> 00:23:09.510
CAM: [MUSIC] So now they’re gonna flood me with whatever I want, so it was a good

00:23:09.510 --> 00:23:15.170
decision on my part because now I have absolutely no problem with getting cards ‘cause they’d

00:23:15.170 --> 00:23:17.470
give me literally whatever the hell I asked for.

00:23:17.470 --> 00:23:21.330
JACK: Once Cam would get the cash out of the cards, he would send half back to the guys

00:23:21.330 --> 00:23:22.590
in Kosovo.

00:23:22.590 --> 00:23:24.880
To do this, he used a service called eGold.

00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:28.940
This is basically sending money through the internet because Bitcoin wasn’t a thing

00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:31.909
yet, so this was an anonymous way to send money.

00:23:31.909 --> 00:23:33.830
Cam’s business was starting to shape up.

00:23:33.830 --> 00:23:38.030
He was getting tons of card details from the Kosovo guys and cashing out stolen cards as

00:23:38.030 --> 00:23:40.059
much as he wanted all day long.

00:23:40.059 --> 00:23:43.750
He pretty much had an unlimited supply of cards and he could keep half of whatever he

00:23:43.750 --> 00:23:44.830
took out.

00:23:44.830 --> 00:23:47.800
He became so successful, he started expanding that business.

00:23:47.800 --> 00:23:50.169
Soon, he had [00:25:00] people doing pick-ups for him.

00:23:50.169 --> 00:23:53.830
He was learning new techniques and he figured out ways to social engineer some of the banks

00:23:53.830 --> 00:23:55.510
connected to the cards.

00:23:55.510 --> 00:23:59.070
He would call the bank and he would pose as the actual cardholder and get the bank to

00:23:59.070 --> 00:24:01.610
switch phone numbers to his burner phone.

00:24:01.610 --> 00:24:05.130
His trick was to use the address of abandoned houses and switch the address and phone number

00:24:05.130 --> 00:24:06.330
to that.

00:24:06.330 --> 00:24:11.169
This way if any potential fraudulent charges were flagged, the bank would call his number

00:24:11.169 --> 00:24:13.659
to confirm did you make this charge?

00:24:13.659 --> 00:24:15.630
He would say yep, and the money would go through.

00:24:15.630 --> 00:24:17.580
CAM: But nowadays this wouldn’t work.

00:24:17.580 --> 00:24:23.830
Nowadays, they got flags for an address being changed within thirty days or things like

00:24:23.830 --> 00:24:24.830
that.

00:24:24.830 --> 00:24:26.429
JACK: I think ‘cause that’s because someone ruined it.

00:24:26.429 --> 00:24:27.550
CAM: Right.

00:24:27.550 --> 00:24:29.230
Somebody, you know.

00:24:29.230 --> 00:24:31.480
I don’t know who.

00:24:31.480 --> 00:24:35.789
JACK: Now, all this time, Cam was still doing all this through Western Union.

00:24:35.789 --> 00:24:39.279
He would call them on the phone, give them the card details, and they would charge it

00:24:39.279 --> 00:24:41.820
and make it ready for him to pick up with his fake ID.

00:24:41.820 --> 00:24:45.201
He would sometimes go to the same place to pick up his money a few times, and he did

00:24:45.201 --> 00:24:49.010
try to go out to different places which meant sometimes taking a road trip and visiting

00:24:49.010 --> 00:24:50.830
Western Unions far away.

00:24:50.830 --> 00:24:55.820
But Cam knew it was also possible to take money from these cards by just using an ATM

00:24:55.820 --> 00:24:56.820
to withdraw money.

00:24:56.820 --> 00:25:00.090
The only problem was he didn’t know how to do that.

00:25:00.090 --> 00:25:03.850
To start, the ATMs require a physical plastic card.

00:25:03.850 --> 00:25:07.390
Cam had dabbled with this in the past but never did figure out how to get these cards

00:25:07.390 --> 00:25:08.600
working right.

00:25:08.600 --> 00:25:12.320
So, how do you get the card details printed on a physical card?

00:25:12.320 --> 00:25:15.120
At the time, there weren’t very good tutorials on how to do that.

00:25:15.120 --> 00:25:18.180
The people who taught him seemed to just be guessing on how to do it and it’s really

00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:19.180
quite difficult.

00:25:19.180 --> 00:25:22.250
[MUSIC] See, on a credit card, there are multiple pieces of information.

00:25:22.250 --> 00:25:25.640
A card has Track 1 data and Track 2 data.

00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:29.070
In these tracks is the information that machines need to process the card.

00:25:29.070 --> 00:25:34.419
Then on top of that, there’s CVV1 and CVV2 data on a credit card.

00:25:34.419 --> 00:25:37.610
Now, one of these is only in the magstripe data.

00:25:37.610 --> 00:25:42.190
So, the only way to get it is to actually scan the card and see what’s there.

00:25:42.190 --> 00:25:45.360
So unless you have that, this gets really hard.

00:25:45.360 --> 00:25:46.770
But not impossible.

00:25:46.770 --> 00:25:50.990
But this track data is obfuscated and confusing to figure out.

00:25:50.990 --> 00:25:55.760
It’s encoded in a weird way and it has lots of extra bits and characters which mean different

00:25:55.760 --> 00:26:00.260
things, so even though he had the credit card data, he needed to figure out how to encode

00:26:00.260 --> 00:26:04.799
it properly to be functioning Track 1 and Track 2 data when it gets swiped.

00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:10.380
I mean, just to give you an idea how weird this is, Track 2 data uses a five-bit scheme;

00:26:10.380 --> 00:26:12.260
four data bits plus one parity bit.

00:26:12.260 --> 00:26:15.720
Now, with four data bits, you have sixteen possible characters, right?

00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:17.180
But it’s not hexadecimal.

00:26:17.180 --> 00:26:22.380
Zero through nine are valid characters but then it uses colons, semicolon, greater than,

00:26:22.380 --> 00:26:24.990
less than, equal, question mark, and dot.

00:26:24.990 --> 00:26:28.529
Yeah, figuring out how to get these characters written into the card properly is tricky.

00:26:28.529 --> 00:26:31.520
But Cam wanted to figure it out, so he started getting supplies.

00:26:31.520 --> 00:26:34.210
Getting the blank credit cards and the card reader is easy.

00:26:34.210 --> 00:26:37.240
Anyone can buy this stuff on eBay and even Amazon sells it today.

00:26:37.240 --> 00:26:42.900
But the expensive and tricky part is the software used to write the cards properly.

00:26:42.900 --> 00:26:48.570
So, Cam spent hours trying to turn his blank cards into real, usable credit cards.

00:26:48.570 --> 00:26:53.950
He’d try a few different cards and write stuff on them and then drive to an ATM and

00:26:53.950 --> 00:26:54.950
swipe them.

00:26:54.950 --> 00:26:56.250
But none were valid.

00:26:56.250 --> 00:27:01.360
So, he’d go home and try some different methods of writing the data to it and then

00:27:01.360 --> 00:27:02.649
drive to the ATMs and try again.

00:27:02.649 --> 00:27:04.260
But it never worked.

00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:06.630
The machines always gave him errors.

00:27:06.630 --> 00:27:11.649
Cam was getting pretty discouraged about this and was about to give up, until one day he

00:27:11.649 --> 00:27:14.071
put his card in the machine and it recognized it.

00:27:14.071 --> 00:27:16.970
It asked him how much money he wanted.

00:27:16.970 --> 00:27:20.780
He asked for the max amount of money, and it just shot out at him.

00:27:20.780 --> 00:27:21.780
It worked.

00:27:21.780 --> 00:27:24.830
CAM: I used to always remember the kid off the movie Terminator 2.

00:27:24.830 --> 00:27:28.740
They were pulling money out of the ATM machine or whatever.

00:27:28.740 --> 00:27:30.710
JOHN: Withdraw 3-0-0 bucks.

00:27:30.710 --> 00:27:34.600
Come on baby, come on, come on, come on.

00:27:34.600 --> 00:27:35.600
Yes!

00:27:35.600 --> 00:27:38.480
CAM: Some twenties flew out in the little tray.

00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.080
The first time that happened, it was like holy shit.

00:27:41.080 --> 00:27:45.360
You’re taking some numbers which basically just came off the internet, you know what

00:27:45.360 --> 00:27:46.360
I’m saying?

00:27:46.360 --> 00:27:49.330
JACK: From then on, cashing ATMs became a regular part of his routine.

00:27:49.330 --> 00:27:51.380
But it didn’t always work for him.

00:27:51.380 --> 00:27:53.470
The encoding was still not right.

00:27:53.470 --> 00:27:54.849
Something wasn’t perfect.

00:27:54.849 --> 00:27:59.230
When you go to do these pickups at Western Union and this one at the ATM, are you wearing

00:27:59.230 --> 00:28:03.481
disguises or do you do it at night or do you have a trick?

00:28:03.481 --> 00:28:06.960
CAM: No, I mean, now, you would – I would obviously wear a hat and some basic stuff

00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:11.450
like that but what I learned actually over the times, the cameras don’t really matter

00:28:11.450 --> 00:28:13.269
that much, especially if you’re out of town.

00:28:13.269 --> 00:28:19.419
Now, the reason I say that is because surprisingly, a lot of the times I guess it’s never reported.

00:28:19.419 --> 00:28:23.169
It’s like how I was saying I’d go back to the same Western Union a lot and the guy,

00:28:23.169 --> 00:28:26.929
still to the day, at least right before I locked up, would still say hey to me; how

00:28:26.929 --> 00:28:27.929
you doing?

00:28:27.929 --> 00:28:28.929
How’s business going?

00:28:28.929 --> 00:28:29.929
Stuff like that.

00:28:29.929 --> 00:28:34.299
Over years, I picked up and also sent god knows how many.

00:28:34.299 --> 00:28:37.710
I used to send a lot of money, too, you know, at him, but also pick up a lot of money.

00:28:37.710 --> 00:28:41.910
So, I don’t know how many times I had picked up, and with different names, all sorts of

00:28:41.910 --> 00:28:42.910
different names and I’d be using shit.

00:28:42.910 --> 00:28:47.360
I mean, he still recognized me and would still say hey, how you doing?

00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:48.360
I mean, it was…

00:28:48.360 --> 00:28:52.179
JACK: [00:30:00] But if you go to the same Western Union shop every day and pick up $1,000,

00:28:52.179 --> 00:28:53.299
do they get suspicious?

00:28:53.299 --> 00:28:55.299
CAM: No, no. Yeah, right.

00:28:55.299 --> 00:29:00.940
No, no, obviously you can’t do that but I will say this; I went to tons of them over

00:29:00.940 --> 00:29:04.700
and over again and I would, for whatever reason, never hear anything about it.

00:29:04.700 --> 00:29:07.590
There was one in particular – and I always thought it was funny because I’ve been in

00:29:07.590 --> 00:29:14.649
there with so many different IDs, so many different names, and I had some bullshit story

00:29:14.649 --> 00:29:17.840
of what – I would throw it in there while I’m doing it to kinda make it a little easier,

00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:22.090
to kinda smooth it over a little bit so it didn’t seem suspicious as to why I’m getting

00:29:22.090 --> 00:29:23.090
all this money.

00:29:23.090 --> 00:29:27.279
A lot of it was stories about outsourcing web development to Kosovo, just bullshit.

00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:32.600
JACK: Cam keeps getting cards from the guys in Kosovo but at this point he’s experimenting

00:29:32.600 --> 00:29:34.549
with buying his own dumps.

00:29:34.549 --> 00:29:39.340
But then he got his hands on one thing that would open up all kinds of new opportunities.

00:29:39.340 --> 00:29:44.321
CAM: Actually, somebody came along on IRC and made a deal to me.

00:29:44.321 --> 00:29:47.640
There was a – it turned out, it was – I guess – I don’t know if you’d call it

00:29:47.640 --> 00:29:50.289
a scam but it was somebody doing – being pretty slick, okay?

00:29:50.289 --> 00:29:54.059
They were selling a program and the program was called dc.exe.

00:29:54.059 --> 00:30:00.790
[MUSIC] Dc.exe was just a real simple little script that – looking back at it, I mean,

00:30:00.790 --> 00:30:04.909
it was compiled; it wasn’t a script but all it did was it had a couple simple functions

00:30:04.909 --> 00:30:09.179
apparently to read a input file and spit out an output file.

00:30:09.179 --> 00:30:14.010
JACK: This was the magic software used to format the data so that MSR could write the

00:30:14.010 --> 00:30:16.520
track data to the card properly.

00:30:16.520 --> 00:30:21.149
Cam found out later it wasn’t so magical but at that time, this was the missing element

00:30:21.149 --> 00:30:22.700
to his operation.

00:30:22.700 --> 00:30:27.950
This would allow him to write stolen credit card data onto blank credit cards more effectively.

00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:31.429
CAM: All it did was just do a couple little operations to the track.

00:30:31.429 --> 00:30:32.500
It added the tracks.

00:30:32.500 --> 00:30:34.559
They automated the process, basically.

00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:39.360
But at the time everybody thought it came with a bin list of all the known bins to work

00:30:39.360 --> 00:30:40.360
with that program.

00:30:40.360 --> 00:30:41.360
You know what I mean?

00:30:41.360 --> 00:30:46.580
You could put in the in file and put a list of phished cards with the expirations and

00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:47.580
you’d run it.

00:30:47.580 --> 00:30:51.200
The out file would be generated track data, right?

00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:55.019
Now, this dude offered to sell this to me for $1,500.

00:30:55.019 --> 00:30:58.100
JACK: Hm, tough call, huh?

00:30:58.100 --> 00:31:04.500
Shady guy on an internet forum is offering to sell Cam a program called dcr.exe for $1,500?

00:31:04.500 --> 00:31:08.490
I don’t think I would buy that.

00:31:08.490 --> 00:31:13.250
But Cam, well, I guess he thought in for a penny, in for a pound, so he bought it.

00:31:13.250 --> 00:31:17.450
The software worked; it encoded the track data onto the cards perfectly.

00:31:17.450 --> 00:31:19.409
Now he’s unlocked the next level.

00:31:19.409 --> 00:31:23.539
He doesn’t have to go to Western Union every time he wants to take money out of these cards.

00:31:23.539 --> 00:31:27.640
Now he could just print some new cards out and go to any ATM and get some money out that

00:31:27.640 --> 00:31:28.640
way.

00:31:28.640 --> 00:31:31.210
There’s so many more ATMs than there are Western Unions in the world.

00:31:31.210 --> 00:31:33.760
Not to mention, you don’t have to interact with anyone at an ATM.

00:31:33.760 --> 00:31:38.179
It’s just a machine, and so there’s no one that can detect you or spot your fake

00:31:38.179 --> 00:31:39.480
ID or anything.

00:31:39.480 --> 00:31:43.370
His possibilities just exploded and Cam rode that explosion.

00:31:43.370 --> 00:31:47.870
He printed up fresh, stolen cards and would drive around to different ATMs just taking

00:31:47.870 --> 00:31:50.950
money out wherever he wanted.

00:31:50.950 --> 00:31:52.380
It was kind of magical.

00:31:52.380 --> 00:31:56.409
You weren’t growing more nervous; you were actually getting more confident and brave.

00:31:56.409 --> 00:31:57.570
CAM: Right.

00:31:57.570 --> 00:31:59.909
That’s kinda what happened.

00:31:59.909 --> 00:32:04.289
I guess just ‘cause you get a little more – like I said, man, it’s nothing I really

00:32:04.289 --> 00:32:06.179
am proud of doing.

00:32:06.179 --> 00:32:09.470
It’s not something I like bragging about or nothing.

00:32:09.470 --> 00:32:11.450
But it’s just kinda how it plays out.

00:32:11.450 --> 00:32:17.740
Also, there was kind of an element to it where on the forums, your reputation on the forums

00:32:17.740 --> 00:32:23.090
and online and stuff to where you’ve got this brand name, you get to where you keep

00:32:23.090 --> 00:32:27.559
pushing it more and more ‘cause you want your reputation better, you know what I mean?

00:32:27.559 --> 00:32:30.769
Or you don’t want to let somebody down that you’re dealing with or whatever.

00:32:30.769 --> 00:32:33.320
Shit got deeper and deeper and drugs didn’t really help.

00:32:33.320 --> 00:32:37.669
JACK: He was now deep into the carding scene, buying thousands of card details at a time,

00:32:37.669 --> 00:32:40.240
printing them out on cards, and cashing them out at ATMs.

00:32:40.240 --> 00:32:43.610
He had some people he knew help him do some of the cash-outs, too.

00:32:43.610 --> 00:32:47.169
He started buying his own card dumps online so he wouldn’t have to send half back to

00:32:47.169 --> 00:32:48.210
the guys in Kosovo.

00:32:48.210 --> 00:32:51.929
Actually, he just stopped dealing with the guys in Kosovo altogether.

00:32:51.929 --> 00:32:55.049
He was getting involved with so many different things and trying to learn how to make more

00:32:55.049 --> 00:32:57.640
money and be more efficient all at the same time.

00:32:57.640 --> 00:33:00.440
This was turning out to be a really profitable little operation.

00:33:00.440 --> 00:33:03.980
At eighteen, Cam bought a new Jeep Cherokee.

00:33:03.980 --> 00:33:07.580
But one night he partied too hard, got really wasted, and tried to drive home.

00:33:07.580 --> 00:33:09.520
He ran off the road and wrecked it.

00:33:09.520 --> 00:33:11.870
He hardly remembers anything from that night.

00:33:11.870 --> 00:33:15.559
But soon after that, he bought a BMW and then later on a he bought a Mercedes.

00:33:15.559 --> 00:33:18.019
He was riding high, standing tall.

00:33:18.019 --> 00:33:21.309
At this point in the operation, Cam’s system was pretty dialed in.

00:33:21.309 --> 00:33:26.710
He would buy card details in bulk online and use different methods to cash them out.

00:33:26.710 --> 00:33:31.780
He was pretty self-sufficient, but not all dumps are the same.

00:33:31.780 --> 00:33:39.419
Good ones are harder to find, so he decided to start stealing credit cards himself.

00:33:39.419 --> 00:33:46.659
[MUSIC] He found someone who would teach him how to phish, and I mean phish as in P-H-I-S-H.

00:33:46.659 --> 00:33:50.139
The guy was teaching him to send phishing [00:35:00] e-mails and getting people to click

00:33:50.139 --> 00:33:55.159
links that they shouldn’t be clicking, and he gave Cam a list of people involved in spamming

00:33:55.159 --> 00:33:56.159
and phishing.

00:33:56.159 --> 00:34:00.799
CAM: It was like a Instant Messenger buddy list or something with a gold mine of contacts.

00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:05.890
If you were phishing, this was the ultimate contact list because basically, it’s got

00:34:05.890 --> 00:34:10.660
all the people selling all the lists of e-mail addresses, targeted e-mail lists, proxies

00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:14.950
for spamming, spamming tools, spamming soft – I mean, everybody that’s really serious

00:34:14.950 --> 00:34:18.829
in spamming, this was a good contact list for it, right?

00:34:18.829 --> 00:34:23.109
JACK: Cam’s phishing scam was to tell people they needed to update their account details

00:34:23.109 --> 00:34:24.109
on PayPal.

00:34:24.109 --> 00:34:28.139
The link would take them to Cam’s website which looked exactly like PayPal, starting

00:34:28.139 --> 00:34:32.139
with the login screen, and then it would ask users to update everything in their account

00:34:32.139 --> 00:34:36.990
details; first name, last name, address, phone number, credit card number, expiration date,

00:34:36.990 --> 00:34:40.980
and heck, he’d even ask for a date of birth or social security number sometimes, too.

00:34:40.980 --> 00:34:45.079
Then when they’d hit Enter, this little PHP script would save all those details and

00:34:45.079 --> 00:34:48.940
send it to Cam but then redirect the user to the real PayPal website.

00:34:48.940 --> 00:34:53.440
So, Cam was working with spammers and phishers to send out tons of e-mails telling people

00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:57.790
they need to come check their account or their auction is ending soon, anything to get them

00:34:57.790 --> 00:34:58.790
to log in.

00:34:58.790 --> 00:35:02.830
A certain percentage of people would open the e-mail and click on the link and go to

00:35:02.830 --> 00:35:06.000
Cam’s fake site and enter their username and password.

00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:09.660
With that, Cam would have their logins to PayPal and eBay.

00:35:09.660 --> 00:35:14.770
Now, to run a scam like this, you need a web server to host your fake website, and Cam

00:35:14.770 --> 00:35:18.780
had a clever trick for getting a website that wasn’t linked to his name.

00:35:18.780 --> 00:35:24.010
CAM: We’d just find some popular public exploit at the time for Apache or whatever

00:35:24.010 --> 00:35:29.130
it was and scan a bunch of IP ranges until we found some – automatically just exploit

00:35:29.130 --> 00:35:33.500
a bunch of little web servers or whatever that were just some bullshit servers somewhere

00:35:33.500 --> 00:35:34.840
that weren’t doing anything.

00:35:34.840 --> 00:35:39.250
JACK: It’s interesting that you used someone else’s hacked server to do all that.

00:35:39.250 --> 00:35:40.849
That’s kind of a brilliant step.

00:35:40.849 --> 00:35:46.829
CAM: Basically, I had a little better edge on it and was able to do a little better,

00:35:46.829 --> 00:35:51.000
and especially when we targeted some of the ISPs and stuff like that.

00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:52.700
Here comes this fucking train again.

00:35:52.700 --> 00:35:55.380
We don’t really know [TRAIN HORN]…

00:35:55.380 --> 00:36:03.579
JACK: Jeez man, that thing’s [TRAIN HORN] – blows it.

00:36:03.579 --> 00:36:13.569
CAM: [TRAIN HORN] I mean, actually, you get kinda used to it.

00:36:13.569 --> 00:36:15.390
[TRAIN HORN]

00:36:15.390 --> 00:36:19.871
JACK: Cam learned how to improve his phishing e-mails to get past spam filters and get a

00:36:19.871 --> 00:36:20.871
higher click rate.

00:36:20.871 --> 00:36:25.720
He wrote a little program to randomize certain parts of the e-mail to get them past filters.

00:36:25.720 --> 00:36:29.410
But at this time, people in the carding scene didn’t really know that much about phishing

00:36:29.410 --> 00:36:33.571
and people in the phishing scene didn’t know that much about carding except Cam, who

00:36:33.571 --> 00:36:35.089
started learning both worlds.

00:36:35.089 --> 00:36:36.190
CAM: I was killing it.

00:36:36.190 --> 00:36:39.230
I had a deal with a dude who was helping me spam.

00:36:39.230 --> 00:36:45.690
At one point I had like ten dedicated servers pushing out 700-some-thousand e-mails an hour.

00:36:45.690 --> 00:36:49.230
JACK: 700,000 e-mails an hour?

00:36:49.230 --> 00:36:54.500
Even if 1% of those people click the link, that’s 7,000 credentials he could get in

00:36:54.500 --> 00:36:56.030
an hour.

00:36:56.030 --> 00:37:00.150
Cam felt invincible until the cops got involved.

00:37:00.150 --> 00:37:05.290
[MUSIC] Cam was in a little town in South Carolina on his way to meet his friends for

00:37:05.290 --> 00:37:06.349
a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

00:37:06.349 --> 00:37:09.070
He decided to work a bit before the parade.

00:37:09.070 --> 00:37:12.540
He started going around to a few ATMs and cashing out.

00:37:12.540 --> 00:37:17.220
Then Cam walked into a Circle K gas station wearing a hat and sunglasses.

00:37:17.220 --> 00:37:20.510
He takes out one of his cards and puts it in the ATM at the gas station.

00:37:20.510 --> 00:37:24.109
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a cop walk in the door.

00:37:24.109 --> 00:37:26.780
He sticks his stuff in his pocket and starts to leave.

00:37:26.780 --> 00:37:31.130
CAM: I go to leave; he’s like hey, are you just gonna leave all those receipts over there?

00:37:31.130 --> 00:37:34.940
JACK: There’s a bunch of ATM receipts sitting on the machine, but they weren’t Cam’s,

00:37:34.940 --> 00:37:35.940
though.

00:37:35.940 --> 00:37:36.950
CAM: I said no, but I’ll throw them away.

00:37:36.950 --> 00:37:38.690
They’re not mine; I’ll throw them away.

00:37:38.690 --> 00:37:40.390
So, I go throw them away and go to leave again.

00:37:40.390 --> 00:37:41.910
He’s like no, hold on a minute.

00:37:41.910 --> 00:37:45.029
He’s like hey, what are you doing?

00:37:45.029 --> 00:37:47.050
What are you – who are you or something.

00:37:47.050 --> 00:37:48.690
He asked for an ID.

00:37:48.690 --> 00:37:50.700
I gave him a fake ID.

00:37:50.700 --> 00:37:54.400
JACK: Cam pulls out a Virginia ID and remembered they’re in South Carolina.

00:37:54.400 --> 00:37:58.490
The policemen starts telling Cam some story about how there had been robberies in the

00:37:58.490 --> 00:37:59.490
area.

00:37:59.490 --> 00:38:02.940
CAM: But as he’s talking to me, I can see outside the door and the windows a bunch more

00:38:02.940 --> 00:38:06.500
cop cars pulling up, so I’m already thinking oh shit, this isn’t good.

00:38:06.500 --> 00:38:08.500
JACK: The cop keeps questioning him.

00:38:08.500 --> 00:38:11.280
CAM: He’s like hey, what are you doing here?

00:38:11.280 --> 00:38:13.829
What are you over here for?

00:38:13.829 --> 00:38:19.100
I said well, I’m from around here originally but I’m in Virginia going to school and

00:38:19.100 --> 00:38:20.750
my family lives over here.

00:38:20.750 --> 00:38:24.210
I’m here visiting family, whatever, but I go to visit – go to my bank.

00:38:24.210 --> 00:38:27.380
I’m trying to find my bank ‘cause my friend told me my bank was over here.

00:38:27.380 --> 00:38:28.760
I didn’t want to pay the fee.

00:38:28.760 --> 00:38:31.030
He told me there was a branch over here.

00:38:31.030 --> 00:38:33.020
I got over here; there’s not, so I just used this one.

00:38:33.020 --> 00:38:34.329
He’s like well, where do you bank at?

00:38:34.329 --> 00:38:39.200
I told him Fifth Third ‘cause I knew that that there was Fifth Third banks over there

00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:41.200
and he’s like no, they’re not here.

00:38:41.200 --> 00:38:45.200
Anyway, I must have – he was convinced, apparently, ‘cause he ended up telling me

00:38:45.200 --> 00:38:47.050
alright, well, just get outta here.

00:38:47.050 --> 00:38:49.700
JACK: Cam gets out of the store [00:40:00] but he’s shook.

00:38:49.700 --> 00:38:53.440
Instead of walking towards his car, he walks the opposite direction and just tries to get

00:38:53.440 --> 00:38:54.720
out of sight quickly.

00:38:54.720 --> 00:38:58.980
He’s just so paranoid that the police will follow him if he drives off, so he leaves

00:38:58.980 --> 00:39:03.210
his car in the parking lot, chills out for a while, and then comes back for it later

00:39:03.210 --> 00:39:04.900
when the coast was clear.

00:39:04.900 --> 00:39:09.400
He gets in his car and drives straight home which was hours away.

00:39:09.400 --> 00:39:13.980
He gets home and gets rid of anything that could connect him to criminal activity; holograms,

00:39:13.980 --> 00:39:17.700
ID-making materials, and the MSR card-writer.

00:39:17.700 --> 00:39:20.550
Cam lays low for a while and just chills out.

00:39:20.550 --> 00:39:25.700
So, we’ll take a quick break right here but don’t go away because this story is

00:39:25.700 --> 00:39:29.089
only half over.

00:39:29.089 --> 00:39:31.020
Months go by and Cam lays low.

00:39:31.020 --> 00:39:32.020
Nothing happens, though.

00:39:32.020 --> 00:39:36.570
Cam convinces himself it must have just been a coincidence that that cop walked into that

00:39:36.570 --> 00:39:40.140
store, but that wasn’t the end of Cam’s legal problems.

00:39:40.140 --> 00:39:45.030
It’s amazing to me what actually got him into trouble next, because even though he

00:39:45.030 --> 00:39:50.730
was engaged in serious criminal activity making fake IDs, it was a dumb teenage crime that

00:39:50.730 --> 00:39:53.400
got him; underage drinking.

00:39:53.400 --> 00:39:58.369
When Cam was eighteen, he got caught at a bar with a fake ID which gave him some legal

00:39:58.369 --> 00:39:59.369
trouble.

00:39:59.369 --> 00:40:03.599
This was the first time he had to go to court because of something related to his carding

00:40:03.599 --> 00:40:04.599
and ID business.

00:40:04.599 --> 00:40:08.190
CAM: The bailiff was like hey, you’re Mr. Harrison?

00:40:08.190 --> 00:40:11.580
Turns out they had found out who I was.

00:40:11.580 --> 00:40:12.580
It turns out the guy…

00:40:12.580 --> 00:40:16.200
JACK: While he was handling his underage drinking charge, local investigators were also trying

00:40:16.200 --> 00:40:20.710
to figure out who was cashing out on stolen credit cards at ATMs, and some of the ATMs

00:40:20.710 --> 00:40:23.500
Cam used were at gas stations.

00:40:23.500 --> 00:40:28.350
One of the cashiers at a gas station saw the video footage of Cam taking money out of the

00:40:28.350 --> 00:40:31.380
ATM and remembered his face.

00:40:31.380 --> 00:40:36.770
Later on, that cashier saw Cam in his car at a different part of town, so the cashier

00:40:36.770 --> 00:40:40.070
wrote Cam’s license plate down and sent it to the police.

00:40:40.070 --> 00:40:44.530
[MUSIC] Cam didn’t know it at the time but an investigator had been onto him.

00:40:44.530 --> 00:40:46.230
But that was in another state.

00:40:46.230 --> 00:40:51.020
Since Cam was in Georgia at the time, the police couldn’t cross lines to arrest him,

00:40:51.020 --> 00:40:55.280
so they just kinda waited for Cam to make another mistake.

00:40:55.280 --> 00:41:00.470
But Cam getting caught for underage drinking was the perfect opportunity for the police.

00:41:00.470 --> 00:41:05.830
They showed up at court with a warrant for Cam, knowing that he’d be there.

00:41:05.830 --> 00:41:11.050
CAM: That dude was so pissed off that local – that local investigator was so mad that

00:41:11.050 --> 00:41:12.430
cop let me go that day.

00:41:12.430 --> 00:41:14.510
He was pissed off.

00:41:14.510 --> 00:41:17.250
He’s like dude, I almost had him fired for that.

00:41:17.250 --> 00:41:20.020
He was yelling at me about it and stuff but I mean…

00:41:20.020 --> 00:41:25.330
JACK: They searched his house for evidence and found a few things that he didn’t clean

00:41:25.330 --> 00:41:26.330
up.

00:41:26.330 --> 00:41:27.950
How much did they think that you did?

00:41:27.950 --> 00:41:28.950
How much did they…?

00:41:28.950 --> 00:41:31.390
CAM: They thought it was just – it was just what they found at my house and stuff.

00:41:31.390 --> 00:41:35.551
They didn’t think – they found a bunch of receipts, they found some more cash, they

00:41:35.551 --> 00:41:38.410
found some more cards, and they didn’t think anybody else was involved.

00:41:38.410 --> 00:41:39.950
You know what I mean?

00:41:39.950 --> 00:41:41.410
They just thought it was me.

00:41:41.410 --> 00:41:43.640
They never really got into the – where it was coming from or anything.

00:41:43.640 --> 00:41:47.430
They just ended up indicting me for all the stuff they found basically at my house.

00:41:47.430 --> 00:41:52.060
JACK: So, while he had actually been carding thousands of cards, phishing millions of people

00:41:52.060 --> 00:41:56.599
and robbing banks all over the country, the police had only uncovered a very small part

00:41:56.599 --> 00:41:57.720
of the operation.

00:41:57.720 --> 00:42:02.950
So, he was charged with financial card forgery and had to serve ten months in a county jail.

00:42:02.950 --> 00:42:06.650
How devastated were you when you heard that sentence that you were gonna go to jail for

00:42:06.650 --> 00:42:08.000
ten months?

00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:09.920
CAM: It actually was a long time.

00:42:09.920 --> 00:42:12.390
It seemed like forever, man, you know?

00:42:12.390 --> 00:42:16.480
JACK: Still, Cam was lucky because the police didn’t find a lot of evidence of what he

00:42:16.480 --> 00:42:20.069
had done and only charged him with cashing out a few cards.

00:42:20.069 --> 00:42:23.470
Compared to what he could have gotten in trouble with; if the police only knew what he had

00:42:23.470 --> 00:42:26.300
been up to, ten months was nothing.

00:42:26.300 --> 00:42:30.630
The police thought he was just working alone and skimming a few credit cards.

00:42:30.630 --> 00:42:34.340
He was able to get out on bond pretty quick, actually.

00:42:34.340 --> 00:42:40.490
But would this be enough of a slap on the wrist to keep Cam out of the scene for good?

00:42:40.490 --> 00:42:45.200
Yeah, it was, at least for a little while.

00:42:45.200 --> 00:42:49.630
But then he’d sometimes get reminded of the thrill of it all.

00:42:49.630 --> 00:42:52.590
He missed [00:45:00] being able to buy drugs and throw parties.

00:42:52.590 --> 00:42:56.070
He missed the lifestyle that his old money brought him.

00:42:56.070 --> 00:42:58.060
So, he got back into it.

00:42:58.060 --> 00:42:59.450
CAM: I didn’t quit.

00:42:59.450 --> 00:43:02.220
I didn’t learn my lesson, like an idiot.

00:43:02.220 --> 00:43:05.599
But I guess you could say – kinda hooked on it.

00:43:05.599 --> 00:43:11.369
JACK: [MUSIC] When Cam got out of jail, he had nothing; no equipment, no cards, no numbers,

00:43:11.369 --> 00:43:12.860
no computer, no money.

00:43:12.860 --> 00:43:14.369
The police seized everything.

00:43:14.369 --> 00:43:16.339
They even froze his bank account.

00:43:16.339 --> 00:43:21.050
So, one of the first things Cam did when he got out of jail was go straight to an internet

00:43:21.050 --> 00:43:22.250
cafe.

00:43:22.250 --> 00:43:25.730
Remember his phishing operation before where he had hacked someone else’s websites and

00:43:25.730 --> 00:43:28.670
staged a fake PayPal login to capture victims’ credentials?

00:43:28.670 --> 00:43:34.310
Yeah, well, he remembered the FTP password to that site, so he sat down and tried to

00:43:34.310 --> 00:43:35.310
log in.

00:43:35.310 --> 00:43:37.760
His password worked first try.

00:43:37.760 --> 00:43:39.970
He was in the server.

00:43:39.970 --> 00:43:45.720
He looked around for the data and sure enough, there were a lot of victim usernames and passwords.

00:43:45.720 --> 00:43:46.830
Bingo.

00:43:46.830 --> 00:43:49.000
This would be all that Cam needed to get going again.

00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:53.319
He could use these peoples’ PayPal and eBay logins to buy whatever he needed on eBay.

00:43:53.319 --> 00:43:58.450
CAM: I carded some cheap web hosting, put the scam page on it, even carded an e-mail

00:43:58.450 --> 00:44:03.829
list from some other marketing supply company or something like that, carded some hosting

00:44:03.829 --> 00:44:08.119
for a PHP mailer, put it on there, spammed some, got a few more cards.

00:44:08.119 --> 00:44:13.470
Anyway, I came all the way back up from scratch from a fucking FTP login that I remembered

00:44:13.470 --> 00:44:15.070
a PayPal scam page for.

00:44:15.070 --> 00:44:19.050
Did a couple Western Unions, got a couple – some more money back in my pocket, all

00:44:19.050 --> 00:44:26.540
from – well, I gotta say a friend loaned me a couple cards and I had that scam page,

00:44:26.540 --> 00:44:29.650
turned it into more cards, and back – all the way back into doing dumb shit, you know?

00:44:29.650 --> 00:44:34.970
JACK: Cam used stolen information to get a new laptop, a card-writer, fake ID printer,

00:44:34.970 --> 00:44:36.869
and went straight back to his old habits.

00:44:36.869 --> 00:44:43.000
CAM: But I will remember; I ended up having all the – several – a bunch of the computers

00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:48.700
that were at the cyber cafe, I turned – I had DarkMailer installed on all of them and

00:44:48.700 --> 00:44:49.700
were blasting out spam.

00:44:49.700 --> 00:44:53.910
I remember there were some kids that would come play Counter-Strike there.

00:44:53.910 --> 00:45:00.390
While I’m sitting there configuring DarkMailer on a couple of them, ‘cause I would just

00:45:00.390 --> 00:45:05.690
hide the process, I remember hearing a couple of them complain about it lagging pretty bad.

00:45:05.690 --> 00:45:10.220
So, it was kinda funny because it was probably because all the machines were sitting there

00:45:10.220 --> 00:45:12.980
blasting out spam.

00:45:12.980 --> 00:45:19.410
But hey, look, I think I gotta get inside right now ‘cause I was supposed to be in

00:45:19.410 --> 00:45:25.210
by 8:00 but I just noticed I think it might be 7:30 sometimes, depending on who’s working,

00:45:25.210 --> 00:45:26.210
and nobody’s out here.

00:45:26.210 --> 00:45:27.210
JACK: Yeah, no problem.

00:45:27.210 --> 00:45:30.050
Alright, so let’s pick this up again next weekend.

00:45:30.050 --> 00:45:34.330
Like I said, I’ve had so many long conversations with Cam to try to understand this whole story.

00:45:34.330 --> 00:45:38.520
To be honest, this story took me a long time to process and understand.

00:45:38.520 --> 00:45:42.650
In between our calls, I would read through court documents and call up other people who

00:45:42.650 --> 00:45:47.200
knew him and look through the Wayback Machine at some of the websites he told me about.

00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:50.630
As far as I can tell, this story checks out just as he tells it.

00:45:50.630 --> 00:45:52.390
CAM: [MUSIC] Hello?

00:45:52.390 --> 00:45:53.560
JACK: Hey.

00:45:53.560 --> 00:45:57.170
Well, are you standing in the yard again?

00:45:57.170 --> 00:45:58.569
CAM: Yeah.

00:45:58.569 --> 00:46:00.630
This train could still come back around.

00:46:00.630 --> 00:46:02.030
JACK: Yeah, it will.

00:46:02.030 --> 00:46:03.030
I’m sure of it.

00:46:03.030 --> 00:46:04.030
CAM: Yeah.

00:46:04.030 --> 00:46:05.030
JACK: How is it out there?

00:46:05.030 --> 00:46:06.030
CAM: Definitely will.

00:46:06.030 --> 00:46:07.030
It’s like, 91 degrees.

00:46:07.030 --> 00:46:09.190
JACK: Oh man, I hope you find some shade.

00:46:09.190 --> 00:46:11.619
CAM: I don’t really remember where we left off.

00:46:11.619 --> 00:46:18.160
JACK: So, you got arrested, you lost everything, and you had an FTP server and you were able

00:46:18.160 --> 00:46:19.220
to get into that.

00:46:19.220 --> 00:46:20.220
CAM: Okay.

00:46:20.220 --> 00:46:24.750
JACK: So, here’s the thing I don’t get, is you just – I mean, you just freshly got

00:46:24.750 --> 00:46:26.380
arrested, freshly got out.

00:46:26.380 --> 00:46:28.839
Why didn’t this teach you a lesson?

00:46:28.839 --> 00:46:33.599
Why didn’t you stop then and say okay, yeah, that’s too dangerous; I don’t want to

00:46:33.599 --> 00:46:34.599
go back to prison?

00:46:34.599 --> 00:46:40.900
CAM: I had already been living on my own and at the time, I needed some more money, so

00:46:40.900 --> 00:46:45.910
it was just something I could do immediately to kinda solve that problem.

00:46:45.910 --> 00:46:50.099
Also, I was just young and pretty dumb, you know?

00:46:50.099 --> 00:46:55.099
I didn’t realize exactly the extent of trouble that I was really getting myself into, I guess.

00:46:55.099 --> 00:46:58.660
Also, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time, to be honest.

00:46:58.660 --> 00:47:02.860
Also, another thing; it’s kinda like once you kinda make some of those connections,

00:47:02.860 --> 00:47:07.540
kinda like your reputation online, I guess; that’ll kinda draw you back too, sometimes.

00:47:07.540 --> 00:47:11.222
It’s like you don’t want to let that reputation go or – I don’t really know how to explain

00:47:11.222 --> 00:47:14.069
it but I definitely wish that I didn’t.

00:47:14.069 --> 00:47:16.440
JACK: Cam had fully established himself once again.

00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:20.500
He was buying cards, cashing them out, and making money right and left.

00:47:20.500 --> 00:47:22.119
He even took it further than he did before.

00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:25.030
CAM: Now at that time, I wasn’t doing a whole lot of it myself.

00:47:25.030 --> 00:47:27.589
I had some other people involved.

00:47:27.589 --> 00:47:31.789
I still would do things a little bit myself from time to time.

00:47:31.789 --> 00:47:34.990
You get to make more of the money if you do it yourself but also, I guess there was kind

00:47:34.990 --> 00:47:39.640
of a excitement to it or something like that that kinda goes along with it.

00:47:39.640 --> 00:47:43.859
JACK: [MUSIC] Cam remembered how his old operation was going well.

00:47:43.859 --> 00:47:47.910
He was able to make fake IDs and get stolen credit card data but didn’t like having

00:47:47.910 --> 00:47:51.500
to split the money he cashed out with people who [00:50:00] gave him the stolen cards.

00:47:51.500 --> 00:47:55.760
So, this time he wanted to figure out a way to steal the credit card data himself.

00:47:55.760 --> 00:48:01.300
This would allow him to close the entire loop of his operation and maximize his profits.

00:48:01.300 --> 00:48:02.890
Cam was figuring out new techniques.

00:48:02.890 --> 00:48:08.350
He had a goal; he wanted to steal credit card information directly from businesses who processed

00:48:08.350 --> 00:48:09.920
credit cards for customers.

00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:14.900
He had watched how others had done it before him and jumped into the game.

00:48:14.900 --> 00:48:18.099
First is to identify businesses who process credit cards.

00:48:18.099 --> 00:48:22.670
Now, he didn’t want to target big businesses because they’re typically more secure.

00:48:22.670 --> 00:48:25.579
If you want to keep your site from getting hacked, one thing you can do is just make

00:48:25.579 --> 00:48:27.839
it harder for criminals like Cam.

00:48:27.839 --> 00:48:30.440
It’s kinda like being chased by a bear, right?

00:48:30.440 --> 00:48:33.559
You don’t need to be faster than the bear; you just need to be faster than the other

00:48:33.559 --> 00:48:35.310
person who you’re running with.

00:48:35.310 --> 00:48:37.809
So, Cam didn’t even try big businesses.

00:48:37.809 --> 00:48:38.860
Too hard, he thought.

00:48:38.860 --> 00:48:43.960
But what about small businesses; locally-owned restaurants, barber shops, coffee shops, bakeries,

00:48:43.960 --> 00:48:44.960
stuff like that?

00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:50.369
They might not have done a thing to secure their network, so targeting them might be

00:48:50.369 --> 00:48:53.549
easy, like grabbing low-hanging fruit.

00:48:53.549 --> 00:48:58.330
He would drive around and find potential targets and go in and see if they had free WiFi.

00:48:58.330 --> 00:49:00.200
If so, he’d sit down and connect to it.

00:49:00.200 --> 00:49:06.089
CAM: One thing I’d do is we’d have somebody go to a business and get the public IP address

00:49:06.089 --> 00:49:08.849
if they had free WiFi or something like that.

00:49:08.849 --> 00:49:14.609
Now I know that either that system or something close to it might be their processing system,

00:49:14.609 --> 00:49:15.790
you know what I mean?

00:49:15.790 --> 00:49:18.599
So, now that IP; I’m gonna scan that whole range.

00:49:18.599 --> 00:49:23.650
JACK: Some small shops didn’t separate their guest WiFi traffic and their cash register

00:49:23.650 --> 00:49:24.650
system.

00:49:24.650 --> 00:49:28.481
So, while inside the shop, he could scan around for all the computers in the network, find

00:49:28.481 --> 00:49:32.119
a machine that might be a cash register, and try to get into it.

00:49:32.119 --> 00:49:37.359
CAM: Once we found an IP range, used the Nmap or something to scan and find out what open

00:49:37.359 --> 00:49:38.440
ports were there.

00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:43.430
JACK: Now, one port in particular he was hoping that was open was 3389 RDP.

00:49:43.430 --> 00:49:45.800
That’s the remote desktop port.

00:49:45.800 --> 00:49:50.430
If this port was open, it meant that cash register allowed remote connections to it,

00:49:50.430 --> 00:49:54.260
probably so someone can remotely connect to it in case there’s a problem with the cash

00:49:54.260 --> 00:49:55.260
register.

00:49:55.260 --> 00:49:59.050
It’s a lot easier to fix it if someone can just get into it remotely versus having to

00:49:59.050 --> 00:50:01.080
send someone onsite to take a look.

00:50:01.080 --> 00:50:06.319
So, this is what Cam was looking for; RDP open on cash registers.

00:50:06.319 --> 00:50:11.460
After visiting a bunch of stores, trying over and over, eventually he got into one at a

00:50:11.460 --> 00:50:12.500
barber shop.

00:50:12.500 --> 00:50:17.140
[MUSIC] He found the computer that processed credit card transactions, then accessed the

00:50:17.140 --> 00:50:21.450
software that handled those transactions, and he grabbed all the credit card data that

00:50:21.450 --> 00:50:24.510
he could find and started copying it over to his computer.

00:50:24.510 --> 00:50:26.990
CAM: It’s a pretty exciting feeling.

00:50:26.990 --> 00:50:29.500
It’s kinda just a thrill, I guess.

00:50:29.500 --> 00:50:33.820
You get on, your heart obviously is starting to beat a little fast or whatever, you get

00:50:33.820 --> 00:50:34.820
a little nervous.

00:50:34.820 --> 00:50:39.609
It was RDP bruting tools so you could put in – I can’t remember.

00:50:39.609 --> 00:50:42.670
It was like, I think Hydra was one of them.

00:50:42.670 --> 00:50:43.950
JACK: Ah, right; Hydra.

00:50:43.950 --> 00:50:45.450
As a defender, I hated Hydra.

00:50:45.450 --> 00:50:47.849
It was persistent, relentless, and scary.

00:50:47.849 --> 00:50:52.290
Here’s what it does; Hydra is a brute-force password-guessing tool.

00:50:52.290 --> 00:50:53.290
It’s free.

00:50:53.290 --> 00:50:56.400
You can search for it on Google and download it and start using it in minutes.

00:50:56.400 --> 00:51:01.230
It’ll try combinations of usernames and passwords to try to log into something.

00:51:01.230 --> 00:51:06.100
But on top of that, it’s able to do this on remote websites or computers, so you can

00:51:06.100 --> 00:51:10.250
tell it hey, try all the usernames and passwords on this website and see if you can get in,

00:51:10.250 --> 00:51:14.520
and Hydra will try tons of combinations of usernames and passwords on that website and

00:51:14.520 --> 00:51:17.119
then tell you if it had any successful logins.

00:51:17.119 --> 00:51:23.490
But it can also try logging into computers through RDP, the remote desktop protocol,

00:51:23.490 --> 00:51:25.920
which is exactly what Cam was doing.

00:51:25.920 --> 00:51:31.000
Once he got into a shop’s network and identified the cash register and found it had RDP open,

00:51:31.000 --> 00:51:35.339
he would unleash Hydra on it and try tons of different passwords to try to log in.

00:51:35.339 --> 00:51:39.560
The default username on a lot of Windows computers is administrator, so he was trying that username

00:51:39.560 --> 00:51:41.800
first with tons of different passwords.

00:51:41.800 --> 00:51:45.380
In case you were wondering how to protect against Hydra, there are a few things.

00:51:45.380 --> 00:51:48.240
First is to lock down who can access that computer over RDP.

00:51:48.240 --> 00:51:51.250
It’s never a good idea for it to be open to the whole internet.

00:51:51.250 --> 00:51:55.900
Second, make sure passwords can’t be easily guessed by using long, complex passwords.

00:51:55.900 --> 00:52:01.220
Third, enable some kind of lockout mechanism or a CAPTCHA to slow down or stop Hydra from

00:52:01.220 --> 00:52:05.400
being able to try a password again, and again, and again, and again.

00:52:05.400 --> 00:52:09.430
Well, as you can imagine, this worked on the barber shop that Cam had access to.

00:52:09.430 --> 00:52:13.270
Hydra tried a bunch of passwords and eventually found one that worked.

00:52:13.270 --> 00:52:16.840
Cam used that password to log into the cash register computer of a barber shop.

00:52:16.840 --> 00:52:20.329
Then he started looking around for the credit card details of the customers.

00:52:20.329 --> 00:52:24.309
CAM: [MUSIC] If you set up your rerun, the point of sale software, and a debugger, so

00:52:24.309 --> 00:52:29.090
that way they can get – scan through the memory address ranges and also look for something

00:52:29.090 --> 00:52:30.430
to match Luhn’s algorithm.

00:52:30.430 --> 00:52:32.880
That’s the way to identify a credit card number.

00:52:32.880 --> 00:52:38.809
JACK: Oh, this is interesting; Luhn’s algorithm, spelled L-U-H-N, is a way to check if a string

00:52:38.809 --> 00:52:41.480
or a number is a credit card number or not.

00:52:41.480 --> 00:52:45.410
Now, you might be wondering isn’t the credit card software and the database where the cards

00:52:45.410 --> 00:52:46.410
are kept secure?

00:52:46.410 --> 00:52:48.560
Like, isn’t all that encrypted?

00:52:48.560 --> 00:52:49.980
Well, yeah, sure, it is.

00:52:49.980 --> 00:52:51.990
But [00:55:00] Cam found a way around that.

00:52:51.990 --> 00:52:57.380
See, for computers to process the card data, it has to read the card data, so in the computer’s

00:52:57.380 --> 00:53:00.530
memory is the credit card details, unencrypted.

00:53:00.530 --> 00:53:03.900
You just have to know where to look in the RAM to find it.

00:53:03.900 --> 00:53:09.000
Cam used a debugger to search the RAM, looking for strings that matched Luhn’s algorithm

00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:13.650
and if he found a hit, then he’d grab that, thinking it might be credit card details.

00:53:13.650 --> 00:53:17.200
CAM: So, if it found something in some of those memory ranges that it was – that computer

00:53:17.200 --> 00:53:22.400
software was known to use or whatever, then – and it matched Luhn’s formula or Luhn’s

00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:25.510
algorithm or whatever, then it would grab the rest of the track.

00:53:25.510 --> 00:53:30.420
The track data has a certain format, so it begins with a – I believe a question mark.

00:53:30.420 --> 00:53:35.309
It either – no, it begins with a semicolon and it ends with a question mark, so basically

00:53:35.309 --> 00:53:37.530
anything in between that would be your Track 2.

00:53:37.530 --> 00:53:41.460
JACK: So, Cam set up a little program on the cash register computer to constantly look

00:53:41.460 --> 00:53:45.069
for new cards and then once an hour, send them to his server.

00:53:45.069 --> 00:53:48.770
So, he was getting bunches of freshly-stolen cards every hour.

00:53:48.770 --> 00:53:53.290
CAM: Now, there was nothing that would really work as good as your own fresh stuff.

00:53:53.290 --> 00:53:57.970
It was about the same as going and buying a base from somebody but also you have the

00:53:57.970 --> 00:53:59.869
added benefit of knowing exactly where it’s at.

00:53:59.869 --> 00:54:02.360
JACK: A base is a database of stolen cards.

00:54:02.360 --> 00:54:06.660
But yeah, buying your cards from other people; who knows how long ago those cards were stolen

00:54:06.660 --> 00:54:10.109
or how many other people have used those cards illegally since then?

00:54:10.109 --> 00:54:15.250
Having his own fresh database that only he used was definitely more profitable for Cam.

00:54:15.250 --> 00:54:19.819
Not only were the cards more valid on this list, but it cost him nothing to acquire them

00:54:19.819 --> 00:54:21.250
except his own time.

00:54:21.250 --> 00:54:26.170
So, he might get a few thousand cards by breaking into a small shop and stealing them; okay.

00:54:26.170 --> 00:54:30.410
But actually driving around, trying to find open WiFis for shops and trying to break into

00:54:30.410 --> 00:54:35.359
their cash registers was a tedious and time-consuming process.

00:54:35.359 --> 00:54:40.119
Cam asked around online what others were doing and someone handed him a special list.

00:54:40.119 --> 00:54:46.170
[MUSIC] He got a list of IP addresses which were supposedly small shops like this.

00:54:46.170 --> 00:54:51.560
The list had thousands and thousands of IPs all belonging to small businesses.

00:54:51.560 --> 00:54:56.560
The theory was that these shops had to be online to process credit card transactions,

00:54:56.560 --> 00:54:57.560
right?

00:54:57.560 --> 00:55:02.690
It was probably a regular Windows computer which ran the software to process the cards.

00:55:02.690 --> 00:55:06.630
But what happens if someone has to fix a problem on one of those computers?

00:55:06.630 --> 00:55:11.740
They would need to either go onsite to the shop and use the computer or set the computer

00:55:11.740 --> 00:55:14.109
up so that it’s remotely controllable.

00:55:14.109 --> 00:55:19.569
So, Cam scanned the list of IPs he got and found a lot of them were actually running

00:55:19.569 --> 00:55:23.619
RDP, the protocol that allows remote connections to it.

00:55:23.619 --> 00:55:27.960
Now, I’ve already said don’t do this; don’t stick a computer right on the internet

00:55:27.960 --> 00:55:30.680
and open it up for remote connections using RDP.

00:55:30.680 --> 00:55:35.300
It just welcomes people like him to start hammering on it to try to get into it and

00:55:35.300 --> 00:55:37.230
pillage whatever’s on there.

00:55:37.230 --> 00:55:43.160
RDP should only be open to computers on a trusted network, not from anyone in the world.

00:55:43.160 --> 00:55:50.299
So, now that Cam has this list of small business IPs with RDP running, he then points Hydra

00:55:50.299 --> 00:55:54.530
to them and Hydra starts trying to crack the password by trying thousands of different

00:55:54.530 --> 00:55:55.530
passwords.

00:55:55.530 --> 00:55:59.560
But there was also a list he got with the default usernames and passwords for each of

00:55:59.560 --> 00:56:04.190
these point of sale systems just in case they didn’t bother changing it from the default.

00:56:04.190 --> 00:56:08.100
[MUSIC] He would point Hydra at one of these computers with RDP running and just let it

00:56:08.100 --> 00:56:10.309
run all night trying different passwords.

00:56:10.309 --> 00:56:13.570
Remember, he’s now doing this remotely over the internet.

00:56:13.570 --> 00:56:15.760
He’s not on their local WiFi anymore.

00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:19.451
To do this, he’s still coming from servers that he hacked into and they weren’t even

00:56:19.451 --> 00:56:20.820
registered in his names.

00:56:20.820 --> 00:56:24.230
So, it would make it harder for authorities to track it back to him.

00:56:24.230 --> 00:56:29.069
So, with the combination of this magic list of IPs of small businesses, finding which

00:56:29.069 --> 00:56:34.539
IPs were running RDP and then pointing Hydra at all those computers, he was able to automate

00:56:34.539 --> 00:56:35.539
his hacking.

00:56:35.539 --> 00:56:39.540
So, he’d check the server in the morning and see that Hydra had successfully found

00:56:39.540 --> 00:56:43.789
passwords to a few systems and then he would remotely connect into that computer with the

00:56:43.789 --> 00:56:48.400
password he found, and bingo; he’s in a computer which is processing credit cards

00:56:48.400 --> 00:56:52.500
for a coffee shop, a restaurant, a bar, a bakery, and he’d find the software which

00:56:52.500 --> 00:56:56.270
was handling the credit card data, download all the credit card data that was stored on

00:56:56.270 --> 00:56:58.140
it, and then close the connection.

00:56:58.140 --> 00:57:01.830
He just got a few thousand more cards to cash out with.

00:57:01.830 --> 00:57:04.619
This was a big turning point in the whole operation.

00:57:04.619 --> 00:57:09.780
He’s now able to get tons of credit card details himself without having to buy them

00:57:09.780 --> 00:57:13.930
and when he pulls cash from them, he doesn’t have to split it with anyone.

00:57:13.930 --> 00:57:16.390
Now he’s able to do this at scale.

00:57:16.390 --> 00:57:21.089
At this point, Cam goes full throttle and turns this into a 24/7 operation.

00:57:21.089 --> 00:57:26.890
CAM: [MUSIC] I would go two, three, four days of – without sleep sometimes just monitoring

00:57:26.890 --> 00:57:33.579
different servers and making sure that I’m still passing filters and things like that,

00:57:33.579 --> 00:57:36.119
tweaking different messages and macros.

00:57:36.119 --> 00:57:42.020
That would wear you out, and then also, believe it or not, obviously with the ATM stuff, you

00:57:42.020 --> 00:57:44.420
have to – obviously gotta keep – you gotta move around.

00:57:44.420 --> 00:57:47.550
You can’t really just be in one spot.

00:57:47.550 --> 00:57:51.260
JACK: All this work resulted in a ton of plastic [01:00:00] credit cards that he could use

00:57:51.260 --> 00:57:53.020
at ATMs and withdraw money.

00:57:53.020 --> 00:57:55.930
But to do this, he has to continuously keep on the move.

00:57:55.930 --> 00:58:00.230
Pulling a bunch of money from the same spot was too suspicious, so he would often go on

00:58:00.230 --> 00:58:04.190
a weekend road trip to another state and do it a bunch of times and then drive back.

00:58:04.190 --> 00:58:07.250
He’d sometimes even fly out of town to do this work.

00:58:07.250 --> 00:58:11.770
He’d make a hotel reservation under a fake name and then ship his equipment there.

00:58:11.770 --> 00:58:16.530
Then he’d fly out and spend a few days on the job, hitting up dozens of ATMs all over

00:58:16.530 --> 00:58:18.619
town, pulling money out with credit cards.

00:58:18.619 --> 00:58:21.710
CAM: I’ve got a stack of fresh ones in my left pocket.

00:58:21.710 --> 00:58:27.270
Now, as I’m working them, I’m putting them in, I’m running – now, usually I

00:58:27.270 --> 00:58:30.900
try to stick to certain machines, even, because after a while you get to learn the different

00:58:30.900 --> 00:58:35.119
makes and models and you get to realize which ones are on a network or which ones are on

00:58:35.119 --> 00:58:36.119
a dial-up.

00:58:36.119 --> 00:58:40.849
Then also machines themselves have a limit, so you’re trying to do as much as possible

00:58:40.849 --> 00:58:46.890
as quick as possible, so you obviously prefer the network machines and you prefer the biggest

00:58:46.890 --> 00:58:48.200
limit you can get on the machine.

00:58:48.200 --> 00:58:51.820
But also, I didn’t – I wasn’t a big fan of the ones that were actually at banks,

00:58:51.820 --> 00:58:55.430
so I would l try to stick to somewhere in between there, so some of the smaller, private

00:58:55.430 --> 00:58:59.140
ones that are inside stores or are in different locations or whatever.

00:58:59.140 --> 00:59:03.170
There was usually some cheaper ones that were dial-up and they’re slower and they have

00:59:03.170 --> 00:59:07.880
maybe a $200 or $300 limit, or there were some faster ones that had a $500 or $1,000

00:59:07.880 --> 00:59:11.230
limit, so you were able to kinda maneuver a little quicker.

00:59:11.230 --> 00:59:15.400
Alright, now you obviously can’t stand at one machine for like twenty minutes or thirty

00:59:15.400 --> 00:59:17.140
minutes or nothing, right?

00:59:17.140 --> 00:59:18.470
I mean, I just – it’s pretty common sense.

00:59:18.470 --> 00:59:22.360
But you want to be able to do the most in the shortest amount of time.

00:59:22.360 --> 00:59:24.829
I’d have a pocket full of them, usually.

00:59:24.829 --> 00:59:28.390
When I’d go up to a machine, I got maybe at least ten of them on me.

00:59:28.390 --> 00:59:31.140
Now, you know, not all of them are gonna work.

00:59:31.140 --> 00:59:35.560
Especially as time went on, that became the number that a lot more and more of them are

00:59:35.560 --> 00:59:36.560
working.

00:59:36.560 --> 00:59:40.599
But I’m gonna put all – I’ll start with all in one pocket.

00:59:40.599 --> 00:59:45.180
If one of them didn’t work, I’d usually put that in a back pocket and if one did work,

00:59:45.180 --> 00:59:48.270
I’d usually take the receipt and the cash that came off of it, wrap it around the card,

00:59:48.270 --> 00:59:50.809
and put it in my right pocket.

00:59:50.809 --> 00:59:56.270
JACK: How many ATMs do you think you would hit in a busy day?

00:59:56.270 --> 01:00:00.240
CAM: Well, it’s like – I guess some of it doesn’t really matter now ‘cause I

01:00:00.240 --> 01:00:01.460
get kinda paranoid or…

01:00:01.460 --> 01:00:04.200
JACK: Okay, we don’t have to get into it.

01:00:04.200 --> 01:00:05.720
CAM: But no, it’s cool.

01:00:05.720 --> 01:00:10.180
Like, okay, I’d say this doesn’t really matter at this point ‘cause, okay, the most

01:00:10.180 --> 01:00:13.880
– we’re talking pulling like, a hundred-some-thousand a day.

01:00:13.880 --> 01:00:14.880
You know what I mean?

01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:19.730
But you gotta figure – it got to where that’s like – 20% is my number.

01:00:19.730 --> 01:00:23.580
JACK: Cash withdrawal limits restarted at midnight, so he’d usually be up ‘til then

01:00:23.580 --> 01:00:25.760
so he could cash out on that ATM twice.

01:00:25.760 --> 01:00:30.430
Then he’d go back to his hotel, dump out all his cash on the bed, and reorganize.

01:00:30.430 --> 01:00:35.150
CAM: I’d usually spend two or three days at least doing it, and then by the end of

01:00:35.150 --> 01:00:41.220
the third day or whatever, I’ve made a nice chunk of money but also I’m pretty worn

01:00:41.220 --> 01:00:47.070
out and sketched out and tired of dodging everything that comes along with that.

01:00:47.070 --> 01:00:50.930
JACK: There’s something hypnotizing about a large amount of money.

01:00:50.930 --> 01:00:55.150
I can just picture Cam sitting on one of the beds in his hotel room, staring at this pile

01:00:55.150 --> 01:01:01.020
of money on the other bed where the slow reality hits him that he did it; the money is his

01:01:01.020 --> 01:01:04.280
and it’s real, and all the things he could buy with that.

01:01:04.280 --> 01:01:08.829
But then the sudden jolt back to reality whenever he heard someone talking in the hall or a

01:01:08.829 --> 01:01:11.070
car door slam outside in the parking lot.

01:01:11.070 --> 01:01:16.520
There’s a lot of anxiety and stress that came with stealing a lot of cash like this.

01:01:16.520 --> 01:01:18.900
How many cameras saw him on that trip?

01:01:18.900 --> 01:01:21.110
Did anyone notice his face around town?

01:01:21.110 --> 01:01:25.600
Were a trail of his fingerprints going to lead back to him at any moment?

01:01:25.600 --> 01:01:31.000
The duality of simultaneously feeling rich and in fear gets to a person.

01:01:31.000 --> 01:01:32.490
CAM: [MUSIC] I did a lot of partying.

01:01:32.490 --> 01:01:37.109
I did a – took a bit of traveling which some of it was to do with business, you know,

01:01:37.109 --> 01:01:41.130
or whatever, as far as this goes, and drugs.

01:01:41.130 --> 01:01:50.180
I pretty much lived at four or five-star hotels for a little while as far as different places

01:01:50.180 --> 01:01:51.820
I was bouncing around between.

01:01:51.820 --> 01:01:52.820
Cars, clothes…

01:01:52.820 --> 01:01:56.670
JACK: What kind of cars were – what kind of cars did you have?

01:01:56.670 --> 01:01:57.869
CAM: Just whatever.

01:01:57.869 --> 01:02:02.970
I’ve had a couple Mercedes, I had a pretty nice BMW, I had some regular – just like

01:02:02.970 --> 01:02:07.260
the trucks I told you about, just like my regular day-to-day little truck or whatever.

01:02:07.260 --> 01:02:10.160
You know, different things like that.

01:02:10.160 --> 01:02:12.550
But my favorite car was my BMW Alpina.

01:02:12.550 --> 01:02:16.570
It was a 2008 Alpina which is like the B7.

01:02:16.570 --> 01:02:19.450
It’s like a special edition 745.

01:02:19.450 --> 01:02:21.680
JACK: Tell me about the parties.

01:02:21.680 --> 01:02:22.680
CAM: You know, it was…

01:02:22.680 --> 01:02:24.369
JACK: What were some of the more exciting parties?

01:02:24.369 --> 01:02:29.890
CAM: I had a New Year’s Eve party at the Intercontinental Hotel.

01:02:29.890 --> 01:02:35.549
Basically, everybody I knew, criminally or otherwise, was there.

01:02:35.549 --> 01:02:36.900
JACK: This was a suite?

01:02:36.900 --> 01:02:38.329
A suite that you rented?

01:02:38.329 --> 01:02:39.619
CAM: Yeah.

01:02:39.619 --> 01:02:41.930
This was a presidential suite at the Intercontinental.

01:02:41.930 --> 01:02:45.800
It was a lot of drugs, drinking, and fun, and a lot of girls.

01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:46.800
JACK: Yeah.

01:02:46.800 --> 01:02:47.890
Did you have a DJ?

01:02:47.890 --> 01:02:48.890
CAM: No.

01:02:48.890 --> 01:02:50.240
I didn’t have a DJ [01:05:00] there.

01:02:50.240 --> 01:02:52.940
JACK: Can you take a guess how much you spent on that party?

01:02:52.940 --> 01:02:57.500
CAM: Yeah, I spent about fifteen-something-thousand dollars, I think, on that party.

01:02:57.500 --> 01:02:58.500
JACK: Hm.

01:02:58.500 --> 01:03:03.960
So, at that moment of your life, that was probably the peak of – peak excitement of

01:03:03.960 --> 01:03:04.960
it all, right?

01:03:04.960 --> 01:03:07.630
You had the cars, you had the parties, you had everything you ever wanted.

01:03:07.630 --> 01:03:09.010
What was life like for you?

01:03:09.010 --> 01:03:11.579
Were you totally happy and satisfied?

01:03:11.579 --> 01:03:14.099
CAM: No. You know what?

01:03:14.099 --> 01:03:16.341
To be honest with you, I couldn’t say I really was, man.

01:03:16.341 --> 01:03:17.341
It was a lot of stress.

01:03:17.341 --> 01:03:22.059
There was times though it was great, you know, but also, like I said, I got pretty deep off

01:03:22.059 --> 01:03:26.829
into some of the drugs and it kinda went up and down.

01:03:26.829 --> 01:03:28.720
It was really stressful, man.

01:03:28.720 --> 01:03:30.670
It’s not something I really want to go back to.

01:03:30.670 --> 01:03:34.000
I guess it was kind of the only thing I knew for a while.

01:03:34.000 --> 01:03:42.020
I really just wish I had went a legitimate route somehow in the opposite direction or

01:03:42.020 --> 01:03:43.020
something, you know?

01:03:43.020 --> 01:03:47.140
Something that was – something where I could get the same thrill out of it but in a different

01:03:47.140 --> 01:03:51.099
way where it wouldn’t put me in prison for ten years or whatever.

01:03:51.099 --> 01:03:54.960
To be honest with you, it wasn’t as much about money for me a lot of times.

01:03:54.960 --> 01:03:58.360
That was a good byproduct to begin with.

01:03:58.360 --> 01:04:01.829
Money wasn’t really my main concern or motivation.

01:04:01.829 --> 01:04:07.099
It was partly I was able to make some money, but it was more about is this gonna work and

01:04:07.099 --> 01:04:13.150
seeing if this would work, and then actually seeing it work and just kinda the thrill that

01:04:13.150 --> 01:04:16.780
came along with that, and just the excitement, I guess.

01:04:16.780 --> 01:04:19.010
Also, advancing up; like I said, the reputation thing.

01:04:19.010 --> 01:04:24.240
For some reason, that was a big part of it as far as online goes, at any time.

01:04:24.240 --> 01:04:30.660
It seemed like almost every time something really good came along, something came along

01:04:30.660 --> 01:04:31.770
and messed it up.

01:04:31.770 --> 01:04:37.069
JACK: The beginning of the end for Cam started when he found a new forum; Carder.su.

01:04:37.069 --> 01:04:40.830
This was basically a marketplace for carders.

01:04:40.830 --> 01:04:45.930
You could buy stolen credit card data here, Track 2 data, fulls, bases, you name it.

01:04:45.930 --> 01:04:49.250
You can connect with cashers or you can ask questions and learn how to card.

01:04:49.250 --> 01:04:52.960
CAM: It was kind of like a loosely-based criminal eBay.

01:04:52.960 --> 01:04:56.940
JACK: As it turned out, the feds had an eye on Carder.su.

01:04:56.940 --> 01:05:01.520
But the website itself was bulletproof, meaning the server was hosted by a company somewhere

01:05:01.520 --> 01:05:06.200
in the world which just didn’t want to listen to US law enforcement, so the feds couldn’t

01:05:06.200 --> 01:05:07.680
seize it or shut it down.

01:05:07.680 --> 01:05:12.650
They had to wait and they got lucky when the person who was running Carder.su moved the

01:05:12.650 --> 01:05:13.799
server.

01:05:13.799 --> 01:05:17.560
For some reason, the people running the site were moving hosting providers and so for a

01:05:17.560 --> 01:05:23.470
few days during this transition, Carder.su was moved onto a server in Dallas, Texas.

01:05:23.470 --> 01:05:27.549
That’s when the feds got a warrant for that website-hosting provider in Dallas.

01:05:27.549 --> 01:05:32.880
They took a snapshot of the server which gave them a list of all the users in the database.

01:05:32.880 --> 01:05:37.510
[MUSIC] The feds were able to go through the user database and look up e-mail addresses.

01:05:37.510 --> 01:05:40.589
Lots of people had signed up to the site using their normal e-mail.

01:05:40.589 --> 01:05:44.010
I bet the police were just able to search LinkedIn with these e-mail addresses and find

01:05:44.010 --> 01:05:45.099
a bunch of people that way.

01:05:45.099 --> 01:05:49.809
In fact, a lot of people did get arrested from this Carder.su bust.

01:05:49.809 --> 01:05:55.319
I talk about Carder.su in Episode 32 called The Carder which is what Cam originally reached

01:05:55.319 --> 01:05:57.190
out to me correcting me on a few things.

01:05:57.190 --> 01:06:00.450
But Cam had been careful on Carder.su.

01:06:00.450 --> 01:06:05.210
He registered as the user Kilobit which he didn’t associate to his real name anywhere.

01:06:05.210 --> 01:06:10.010
It didn’t seem like the feds had any leads on catching Cam from this bust.

01:06:10.010 --> 01:06:14.869
Cam made an unrelated mistake, though; he partied too hard one night at a DoubleTree

01:06:14.869 --> 01:06:16.119
hotel in Alabama.

01:06:16.119 --> 01:06:20.780
He was staying there with a friend and they were smoking weed in the hotel room, but someone

01:06:20.780 --> 01:06:23.319
called to complain about the smoke.

01:06:23.319 --> 01:06:25.681
Cam got a knock on the door and his friend opened it.

01:06:25.681 --> 01:06:28.880
It was the police and they made their way into the room.

01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:32.490
Well, were you thinking oh shit, oh shit, oh shit?

01:06:32.490 --> 01:06:33.940
CAM: Yeah, of course.

01:06:33.940 --> 01:06:37.740
JACK: The police asked for their IDs and Cam gave them a fake one, of course; the one he

01:06:37.740 --> 01:06:39.420
actually used to reserve the room with.

01:06:39.420 --> 01:06:40.640
CAM: I was pretty worried.

01:06:40.640 --> 01:06:45.789
It kinda was like all of a sudden they were thinking I was the guy on the fake ID.

01:06:45.789 --> 01:06:51.359
When one of them found my real ID, they were kinda like, who is this?

01:06:51.359 --> 01:06:53.640
So, I’m telling oh, that’s me.

01:06:53.640 --> 01:06:59.270
So, they still haven’t connected the two until he hears the other one calling a warrant

01:06:59.270 --> 01:07:00.609
check on the fake name.

01:07:00.609 --> 01:07:03.260
He’s like well, if that’s him, who’s he?

01:07:03.260 --> 01:07:04.260
Who’s this?

01:07:04.260 --> 01:07:06.470
JACK: Cam gets arrested and the Secret Service interviews him.

01:07:06.470 --> 01:07:09.579
Now, you might be thinking what the heck does the Secret Service have to do with this?

01:07:09.579 --> 01:07:11.279
Aren’t they supposed to be protecting the president?

01:07:11.279 --> 01:07:16.410
Well, they do that but they also investigate financial crimes too, like stolen credit cards.

01:07:16.410 --> 01:07:20.809
For some reason, they had a hunch that Cam was into more than just fake IDs.

01:07:20.809 --> 01:07:25.329
This is the second time being arrested with a fake ID and the time before, he was busted

01:07:25.329 --> 01:07:27.460
doing stolen credit card stuff.

01:07:27.460 --> 01:07:30.520
So, they investigated him further to try to figure out more.

01:07:30.520 --> 01:07:35.880
CAM: One of them made a comment that yeah, we talked to Washington and they know who

01:07:35.880 --> 01:07:36.880
you are.

01:07:36.880 --> 01:07:41.539
Now, at the time, I’m thinking that they were just trying to scare me or something

01:07:41.539 --> 01:07:42.539
like that.

01:07:42.539 --> 01:07:43.700
JACK: But it wasn’t a bluff.

01:07:43.700 --> 01:07:47.460
The police had confiscated Cam’s computer and they found something very interesting

01:07:47.460 --> 01:07:48.460
on it.

01:07:48.460 --> 01:07:51.390
When they booted it up, Kilobit appeared [01:10:00] on the screen.

01:07:51.390 --> 01:07:56.150
Cam had named his computer Kilobit and this was the same name he used on the Carder.su

01:07:56.150 --> 01:07:57.150
forums.

01:07:57.150 --> 01:07:59.020
The police knew about Kilobit for years.

01:07:59.020 --> 01:08:02.880
The Secret Service in Las Vegas had been submitting reports about the alias, trying to figure

01:08:02.880 --> 01:08:04.319
out who was behind the name.

01:08:04.319 --> 01:08:08.090
CAM: One of the things that kinda got me in a little more trouble was helping out a lot

01:08:08.090 --> 01:08:12.231
more – and a lot of people’s questions and it – a lot of things like that.

01:08:12.231 --> 01:08:17.159
I think that kinda – what made me more of a prevalent person on that forum in their

01:08:17.159 --> 01:08:21.009
eyes, anyway, and then just being around for a long time and people knowing generally who

01:08:21.009 --> 01:08:22.009
I was.

01:08:22.009 --> 01:08:23.140
JACK: But Cam didn’t know that then.

01:08:23.140 --> 01:08:26.000
In his mind, he had just been caught with some fake IDs.

01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:29.640
He got out on bail and he was thinking he might get lucky a second time and just get

01:08:29.640 --> 01:08:31.540
away with a slap on the wrist.

01:08:31.540 --> 01:08:35.260
But that fantasy started to crumble one day when he got a call from his brother.

01:08:35.260 --> 01:08:40.930
CAM: My brother calls me and tells me that Secret Service and Homeland Security had just

01:08:40.930 --> 01:08:41.930
left his house.

01:08:41.930 --> 01:08:43.250
[MUSIC] I’m like, man, what?

01:08:43.250 --> 01:08:44.250
I’m thinking, what?

01:08:44.250 --> 01:08:47.980
Okay, what – they were looking for you, but they wouldn’t tell me what it was about.

01:08:47.980 --> 01:08:49.270
JACK: Cam was getting worried.

01:08:49.270 --> 01:08:50.529
Now they’re investigating his brother?

01:08:50.529 --> 01:08:53.220
Now they have Homeland Security involved?

01:08:53.220 --> 01:08:57.750
Cam had two phones; a normal one and a burner one for shady activity.

01:08:57.750 --> 01:09:01.180
He noticed that he’d lost his burner phone, so later that morning, he called a friend

01:09:01.180 --> 01:09:03.540
thinking he might have left his phone at his friend’s house.

01:09:03.540 --> 01:09:06.190
CAM: I’m like hey, man, I think I left my phone at your house.

01:09:06.190 --> 01:09:09.640
He’s like yeah, you definitely did because Secret Service and Homeland Security was here

01:09:09.640 --> 01:09:11.140
this morning looking for you.

01:09:11.140 --> 01:09:18.699
So, now I’m starting to realize well, it’s kinda weird; they’re not only in one city

01:09:18.699 --> 01:09:21.540
but they’re in another city several hours away.

01:09:21.540 --> 01:09:23.660
JACK: Cam doesn’t know what to make of this.

01:09:23.660 --> 01:09:24.900
He starts getting nervous.

01:09:24.900 --> 01:09:29.130
A few days pass and he keeps hearing about the indictment related to Carder.su, but he

01:09:29.130 --> 01:09:34.250
convinces himself that he’s clean and there’s no connection between him and Carder.su that

01:09:34.250 --> 01:09:36.080
he left behind.

01:09:36.080 --> 01:09:41.400
Then while reading a blog, he comes across a copy of the indictment with his name on

01:09:41.400 --> 01:09:43.429
it. Cam calls his lawyer.

01:09:43.429 --> 01:09:49.400
CAM: Now I call him and I’m like hey man, I’m indicted by the feds for the RICO Act

01:09:49.400 --> 01:09:50.400
in Las Vegas.

01:09:50.400 --> 01:09:51.910
He’s like well, how do you know that?

01:09:51.910 --> 01:09:54.130
I’m like, ‘cause I’m reading about it on a blog.

01:09:54.130 --> 01:09:56.130
He’s like well, you know.

01:09:56.130 --> 01:10:00.440
I’m like, there’s a copy of the indictment on the guy’s blog, man.

01:10:00.440 --> 01:10:01.710
Do you want me to send it to you?

01:10:01.710 --> 01:10:05.190
He’s like yeah, send it to me and I’ll call you back.

01:10:05.190 --> 01:10:07.030
So, I e-mail it to him.

01:10:07.030 --> 01:10:10.510
He calls me back and he’s like yeah, if you go to court, they’re probably gonna

01:10:10.510 --> 01:10:12.540
be there to arrest you.

01:10:12.540 --> 01:10:14.130
So, I didn’t go.

01:10:14.130 --> 01:10:18.590
JACK: [MUSIC] Cam gets a new ID, a new car, a new phone, and splits.

01:10:18.590 --> 01:10:21.620
CAM: Well, I’m not gonna officially say I went on the run.

01:10:21.620 --> 01:10:25.520
JACK: For a month he holes up in an apartment, too afraid to go out.

01:10:25.520 --> 01:10:28.990
He feels like the walls are closing in on him and there’s no place to go.

01:10:28.990 --> 01:10:30.860
Finally, he can’t take it anymore.

01:10:30.860 --> 01:10:33.560
He goes outside to get a haircut.

01:10:33.560 --> 01:10:36.409
On that day, some local cops pull him over.

01:10:36.409 --> 01:10:39.660
Cam can tell right away that this isn’t just some traffic stop.

01:10:39.660 --> 01:10:42.520
They tell him to get out of the car and put his hands on his back.

01:10:42.520 --> 01:10:44.370
He gives the cop a fake ID.

01:10:44.370 --> 01:10:46.630
They pat him down and put him in the back of the police car.

01:10:46.630 --> 01:10:50.080
They ask him if he knows who Cameron Harrison is.

01:10:50.080 --> 01:10:52.750
CAM: I told him no.

01:10:52.750 --> 01:10:54.409
But I was just scared, obviously.

01:10:54.409 --> 01:10:57.830
I didn’t really know exactly what to do.

01:10:57.830 --> 01:11:00.480
JACK: An unmarked car pulls up by the police car.

01:11:00.480 --> 01:11:05.100
The police talk to the man in the unmarked car who comes over to Cam, holding a big,

01:11:05.100 --> 01:11:06.290
blown up photo of Cam.

01:11:06.290 --> 01:11:07.290
CAM: They know exactly who I was.

01:11:07.290 --> 01:11:11.880
From the minute I was in the back of the car, he asked do you know who Cameron Harrison

01:11:11.880 --> 01:11:12.890
is?

01:11:12.890 --> 01:11:15.650
JACK: That was the end for Cam.

01:11:15.650 --> 01:11:19.580
He went directly to jail, did not pass Go, and stayed there.

01:11:19.580 --> 01:11:21.460
They had quite a lot of evidence on him.

01:11:21.460 --> 01:11:25.980
They knew about all his activity on Carder.su because they had his computer too, and all

01:11:25.980 --> 01:11:27.390
the equipment from his house.

01:11:27.390 --> 01:11:31.190
The prosecutors knew he had broken the law but they were trying to figure out exactly

01:11:31.190 --> 01:11:33.860
what he had had done and how bad it was.

01:11:33.860 --> 01:11:37.680
Helping criminals on forums is not that bad but breaking into small businesses, stealing

01:11:37.680 --> 01:11:42.140
credit cards, printing them, and going town to town draining every ATM in sight certainly

01:11:42.140 --> 01:11:43.140
is.

01:11:43.140 --> 01:11:46.580
Would the feds be able to figure out that he had stolen all these credit cards himself

01:11:46.580 --> 01:11:48.380
and done all that work?

01:11:48.380 --> 01:11:51.060
He wondered just how much the courts knew about him.

01:11:51.060 --> 01:11:56.810
Do you know how much you may have made from all this illegal activity in total?

01:11:56.810 --> 01:11:59.480
Did you make a million dollars or more?

01:11:59.480 --> 01:12:09.580
CAM: I mean, that’s kind of a topic that isn’t something I like to say a whole lot

01:12:09.580 --> 01:12:15.850
in public or whatever, but this – I guess you could say I did pretty well.

01:12:15.850 --> 01:12:20.630
I lived very nicely for many, many years which – with no worries, I guess you could say.

01:12:20.630 --> 01:12:23.600
I don’t really want to put a whole number on it like that.

01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:24.600
JACK: Yeah.

01:12:24.600 --> 01:12:27.720
It was really hard for the police to sort out what they were dealing with here.

01:12:27.720 --> 01:12:33.120
The roll-up of Carder.su identified a lot of criminals, so Cam’s indictment had thirty-nine

01:12:33.120 --> 01:12:35.620
other people on it, including him.

01:12:35.620 --> 01:12:39.640
Tons of people on that site were trafficking and cashing out on stolen credit cards.

01:12:39.640 --> 01:12:43.280
Tracking every card, trying to figure out how much was stolen was a mammoth task for

01:12:43.280 --> 01:12:44.280
law enforcement.

01:12:44.280 --> 01:12:48.120
But they came up with a number and decided that everyone on the indictment has to pay

01:12:48.120 --> 01:12:52.410
50 million dollars in restitution [01:15:00] because the feds claimed everyone was responsible

01:12:52.410 --> 01:12:54.560
for the group’s activity.

01:12:54.560 --> 01:12:56.510
How are you gonna pay 50 million dollars off?

01:12:56.510 --> 01:12:58.469
CAM: That’s a good question, man.

01:12:58.469 --> 01:13:02.429
JACK: [MUSIC] The 50 million was determined because the courts decided the entire group

01:13:02.429 --> 01:13:06.909
of thirty-nine people had stolen 50 million dollars from credit cards, because some of

01:13:06.909 --> 01:13:11.190
the people in the indictment were stealing the cards and some of the people were selling

01:13:11.190 --> 01:13:13.800
the cards and some of the people were cashing out on the cards.

01:13:13.800 --> 01:13:15.620
That’s why there’s a lot of overlap.

01:13:15.620 --> 01:13:20.239
It’s hard to determine how much this person did or that person did when really it’s

01:13:20.239 --> 01:13:24.100
when they got together collectively is when they were able to steal the most.

01:13:24.100 --> 01:13:26.139
A sentence came down for Cam.

01:13:26.139 --> 01:13:28.180
They found him guilty of RICO.

01:13:28.180 --> 01:13:33.100
That’s participating in racketeering, influence, and corrupt organization.

01:13:33.100 --> 01:13:37.909
Because Cam had cashers himself and was making fake IDs for people to use to pick up money

01:13:37.909 --> 01:13:43.409
at Western Unions and ATMs, it meant he was organizing some of this which means harsher

01:13:43.409 --> 01:13:45.969
penalties compared to just taking part.

01:13:45.969 --> 01:13:52.400
He was found guilty and the judge sentenced him to 115 months which is nine years, seven

01:13:52.400 --> 01:13:53.400
months.

01:13:53.400 --> 01:13:57.390
He was able to get out after eight years and then go to a halfway house.

01:13:57.390 --> 01:14:01.659
He still has to pay back that 50 million dollars in restitution.

01:14:01.659 --> 01:14:05.130
Prison gave Cam a lot of time to think about what he did.

01:14:05.130 --> 01:14:10.190
CAM: At the end, I would have been a lot happier probably doing something legitimate.

01:14:10.190 --> 01:14:16.010
It wouldn’t have been too much trouble and I wouldn’t have tarnished my chances of

01:14:16.010 --> 01:14:18.330
any of that as bad as I have now.

01:14:18.330 --> 01:14:21.120
Also wouldn’t have put a lot of people through a lot of stress that I wish I hadn’t have

01:14:21.120 --> 01:14:22.820
as far as family and stuff like that goes.

01:14:22.820 --> 01:14:28.360
Now at the time, you don’t think about that as much when you’re that young, I guess,

01:14:28.360 --> 01:14:32.090
and also when you’re in the middle of doing things like that, but when you’re sitting

01:14:32.090 --> 01:14:34.930
in prison for several years, you definitely do.

01:14:34.930 --> 01:14:39.449
JACK: Cam went to prison in 2012 and he spent eight years in there.

01:14:39.449 --> 01:14:42.550
Now he’s out, or at least halfway out.

01:14:42.550 --> 01:14:46.830
I called him while he was at a halfway house but now he’s living in his own apartment.

01:14:46.830 --> 01:14:48.280
What are your future plans?

01:14:48.280 --> 01:14:52.640
CAM: Well, I’m still working on that but I’m hoping I can actually do something that

01:14:52.640 --> 01:14:55.620
kinda – have more of a positive role.

01:14:55.620 --> 01:15:02.010
The ultimate goal would be – and the dream outcome would be to somehow – to use a lot

01:15:02.010 --> 01:15:05.800
of the bullshit that I’ve accumulated over time, a lot of the different knowledge to

01:15:05.800 --> 01:15:11.920
something beneficial in some sort of way but obviously, I can understand trust would be

01:15:11.920 --> 01:15:13.120
an issue.

01:15:13.120 --> 01:15:21.389
I guess it makes you realize how much of a waste a lot of the quick money was, you know?

01:15:21.389 --> 01:15:26.190
It wasn’t really – it doesn’t equal to happiness.

01:15:26.190 --> 01:15:32.739
(OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to Cameron Harrison, AKA Kilobit, for coming

01:15:32.739 --> 01:15:34.860
on the show and telling us your story.

01:15:34.860 --> 01:15:36.659
You can follow Cam on Twitter.

01:15:36.659 --> 01:15:39.820
His name there is @CamSaysThis.

01:15:39.820 --> 01:15:44.580
This show is made by me, Jack Rhysider, where the only cards I trade are Magic the Gathering

01:15:44.580 --> 01:15:45.580
cards.

01:15:45.580 --> 01:15:48.630
This episode was produced by Ilana Strauss who’s always checking her shutter speed,

01:15:48.630 --> 01:15:53.219
sound design by the marvelous Andrew Meriwether, editing help this episode by the mini-boss

01:15:53.219 --> 01:15:54.219
Damienne.

01:15:54.219 --> 01:15:57.909
Our theme music is by the space-traveler, Breakmaster Cylinder.

01:15:57.909 --> 01:16:01.720
Even though I keep getting in trouble for placing realistic plastic snakes under the

01:16:01.720 --> 01:16:29.060
data center floor tiles, this is Darknet Diaries.